WALK SOFTLY, STRANGLER

by Robert Hart Davis

CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE, November 1973.

She was lovely, she was famous, and very dead when Chan found her. A jeweled fly led the Honolulu detective into the web of deceit and violence that surrounded the mysterious House of Wu and its surprised guests...

I

MEI T'ANG WU'S face was as impassive as a mask of pale gold. Only the slight narrowing of her eyelids and a tautness at the corners of her lotus blossom lips revealed the fury that lurked behind it. Even her low pitched, faintly husky voice was under rigid control.

"Ah-Nah," she said to the younger, slighter, less beautiful woman confronting her, "how did this find its way to the carpet?"

"This" was a tiny insect of intricately wrought gold with diamond eyes and wings of transparent amber set in threadlike gold frames. It lay in the palm of her outstretched left hand, barely covering the span between the heart and life lines upon that velvetlike surface.

There was tension in the younger woman's voice as she replied, "It was not there when I vacuumed the room this morning."

"Obviously. If it had been, the vacuum would have picked it up. I should not have found it... or found this."

She opened the palm of her right hand and unfolded the fine linen handkerchief upon it. Within its folds lay what looked like a ginseng root, marvelously ugly and intricate to the final whisker, its surface dotted twice, once with what looked to be a replica of the golden fly in her left hand, the other a gauzy dragonfly of like expensive elements.

Ah-Nah's dismay became confusion. She said, "I don't understand."

The aging screen star thrust both hands toward Ah-Nah, said, "Take a closer look."

Ah-Nah did so, a scowl on her pretty Sino-American face revealing nearsightedness as well as concentration. After a long, silent moment, she straightened up, her eyes wide, and said, "This is a copy. Very good, too."

"But not good enough," said the former film star. "What was jade is alabaster - soapstone. What was gold, what were diamonds, are - who knows?"

"But who -" Ah-Nah began, then stopped in utter dismay.

"Never mind for now, Ah-Nah. Let us examine the contents of the other jars."

The room in which the two women stood was as fantastic as the dragon patterns of solid gold thread woven into the richly embroidered antique mandarin robe that sheathed Mei T'ang's slim, still elegant body from throat to heels. She was more than seventy years old - how much more was a carefully kept secret - and looked not a day older than thirty-eight. She moved with the sinuous ease and grace of a well conditioned young woman of twenty-eight.

Surrounding them, atop richly lacquered ebony cabinets, stood a long row of old-fashioned apothecaries' jars each two feet high and half as much in diameter, looking oddly out of place against the costly Chinese cloud tapestries that covered most of the walls, leaving room only for two large casement windows to the north plus the two doors.

At the bottom of each jar lay a different form of plant or animal life, enduring endlessly without preservative since each was, or had been, a masterpiece of the jeweler's art, each exotic vegetable or root adorned with some form of insect life reproduced in mineral and metal on the base of perfectly selected and carved jade. Here were small carp with ruby eyes, scales lustrous with the rich red hue of Shansi gold, dried frogs of clouded green jade, glittering coiled snakes of jet and silver with more golden flies on their outstretched tongues.

The collection, as both women knew, was insured for more than a million dollars and this was a mere token estimate of its actual cash value in the present day collectors' market - it was, at any rate, beyond value if only because it was unique and therefore irreplaceable, unmatchable. Or it had been before it was debased by substitution.

Now all of the originals were gone... enough to represent a theft far surpassing the value of any of the celebrated Brinks' armored truck robberies of years gone by. Ah-Nah made notes as her mistress took inventory of each of the hundred or more objects that reposed in the bottoms of the large jars.

Only once, toward the end of the chore, did Ah-Nah speak. Then it was to say, "Your company - the guests will be arriving soon."

With a quick, impatient angry gesture - the first visible evidence of the rage that burned within her Mei T'ang said, "Keep them in the conservatory. Give me the list - we have done enough. Now I must talk to the thief."

When the woman had silently departed, her mistress stood briefly in thought. Then, with a deep breath that lifted the small, still firm breasts beneath the brocaded mandarin jacket, she glided to the ebony table that stood in room center, lifted the telephone handset from its top and began to dial a number.

Behind her, the second dark door opened silently and her dialing was interrupted by a gently mocking voice that said, "There is no need to call, loved one. I am here. I must confess to welcoming this confrontation, now that it has come. I never dreamed it would take you so long to find me out."

Before Mei T'ang could reply, the silken steel-hard fingers were around her throat and her breathing was abruptly cut off. Nor did she breathe again in this world.

II

DR. ERIC Svorenssen, D.D.S., lifted his foot from the pedal, thus halting the deadly drone of the dental drill, and stood back, beaming proudly at the patient in the chair. Beneath the pale straw thatch of his thinning hair, his face resembled an inverted russet pear set atop the larger inverted pear of his body, an erstwhile athlete quite happily gone to seed via enjoyment of the good things of middle life.

He said, "That should do it for now, Charlie. We'll have the abutment inlay ready when you come back Thursday. It wasn't so bad, was it?"

Chan said, "Mouth feel like boxing glove but unable to hit back at tormentor."

Dr. Svorenssen flicked the tip of his bulbous nose with a thumbnail, said, "Come on Charlie. You speak better English than I do. Save the Confucius Say bit for your admiring public."

He turned away.

Chan said, rubbing his jaw with thumb and forefinger and feeling as if there were nothing there, "Not speak good English with face full of Novocain. Tongue fill mouth to point of detonation."

Removing his white jacket, for this was his final appointment of the afternoon, Dr. Svorenssen said, "If I hadn't used Novocain, you'd feel a lot worse."

"Perhaps - but cure sometimes worse than sickness."

The need for new bridgework was part of the reason for the presence in Los Angeles of the veteran Inspector of the Honolulu Detective Bureau. The other part being the first American showing of some spectacular samples of pre-Confucian Chinese art unearthed by the busy archeologists of Mao Tse-tung's Peoples' Government.

Chan had found, over a period of more than two decades, that Eric Svorenssen, while not possessed of the most delicate of dental touches, did work that lasted. If his technique was "shoot 'em full of Novocain and then blast," it worked. Once a Svorenssen bridge was in, it stayed in. He was knowledgeable, thorough, and remarkably more skillful than his battering ram methods suggested.

Donning a resplendent sports jacket in a vivid Saxony gun club check while his pretty little Swedish assistant helped Chan into his light pongee coat, Dr. Svorenssen said, "Let me give you a lift to the hotel, Charlie."

"Too much trouble," said Chan. "Out of your way."

Eric Svorenssen lived in one of the pale pink towers of Park La Brea, less than four blocks from his office in the Desmond Tower, overlooking that stretch of Wilshire Boulevard called the "Miracle Mile" for reasons unknown save to the developers who hung the title upon it. Chan had taken a small suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt, a good two miles to the north-northeast.

"I'm going your way," said Svorenssen, opening the door that led to the foyer of his office and bidding a cheerful farewell to his receptionist. Neither believing nor disbelieving, Chan saw no reason for further protest. He told himself he would do more than the same for his friend whenever he chose to visit the Islands.

They drove north in the dentist's black Mercedes through the used-car-lot wastelands of La Brea Avenue. Not until they were halted for a red light at Willoughby did either of them speak again.

Then Doctor Svorenssen said, "You remember Mei T'ang Wu, Charlie?"

"Hearts of Palm favorite film for many years. Much in love with her," said Chan. "Is she dead?"

"She's very much alive," said Svorenssen. "I've been taking care of her teeth for almost thirty years. She's still the most beautiful Oriental woman I have ever seen."

"Chinese flower slow to fade," said Chan, a reminiscent glow lending warmth to his usually inscrutable dark eyes. "Very good news, my friend. With the years, my list of personal idols reads like the casualty list of the Fort Pillow Massacre."

"And that's the truth," said Svorenssen sadly, negotiating' a lane change to avoid a stalled moving van. Certain his friend had not brought up the former film star's name idly, Chan waited for the explanation. It came as they passed Santa Monica Boulevard.

"Mei T'ang is entertaining this afternoon," Svorenssen said. "I'm taking you there now if you don't mind, Charlie."

"Have I a choice?" Chan countered cryptically.

"None," said his friend. "She called earlier to ask me to bring you. Mei T'ang have problem - damn you, you've got me talking your pidgin!"

Chan masked a smile of amusement, said, "Wise man watch self near poison oak or catch same." A pause, then, "Eric, you know I'm not in Hollywood for business, apart from the damnable business of my bridgework."

"I hope you'll see her," said Svorenssen. "Otherwise, I'll take you to the hotel. But she sounded distressed when she called - and angry."

"Every intention of accepting. Chance to meet idol of youth not to be neglected."

"Who said that?" Svorenssen asked, "Confucius or Lao T'se?"

"Charlie Chan," said the detective with a trace of smugness. Then, "Does she still live in fabulous House of Wu?"

"You'll see for yourself in about two minutes," said Svorenssen as he drove past Hollywood Boulevard to take the right turn at Franklin.

Like any normal American-bred-youth of his era, Charlie Chan had been a devotee of the late silent and early talking films and had devoured his fill of the ecstatic fan magazines that flourished between the two World Wars. He had feasted his eyes on picture layouts of Rudolph Valentino's Falcon's Lair, on Harold Lloyd's terraced palace, on Nazimova's Garden of Allah - and on exotic Mei T'ang Wu's House of Wu, in many ways the most remarkable of all Hollywood aeries of the great days of the so-called film capital.

Built in 1932 a mere two blocks northwest of Grauman's Chinese Theater, it was neither solely a private residence, a hotel nor an apartment house but, in the purported words of its sleekly glamorous creator, "combines the best features of all, functionally and artistically."

Since Mei T'ang was of Chinese ancestry like himself, albeit California rather than Hawaiian born, the young Charlie Chan had been one of her most loyal and devoted fans.

He had seen her in at least a score of her filmed epics, from the early, and silent, Kowloon Nights to her final appearance as Mother Goddan in a technicolor revival of John Colton's Shanghai Gesture. Yet, despite his avid interest and his reading of hundreds of publicity stories ' that purported to tell "the truth" about her private life, Mei T'ang remained a cipher, an enigma - which, with the passage of time and the growth of sophistication, Charlie Chan had come to accept as an integral part of her carefully contrived public image.

Inscrutable and Oriental... of the real Mei T'ang, Chan had long ago reluctantly accepted the sad fact that he knew nothing at all. And now, after so many years, so much bemused speculation, he was to meet her in the flesh.

Chan suppressed a surge of immature curiosity about the mystery. In view of the fact that he was so soon to meet his long-time idol and that she had asked to see him, he decided against questioning Dr. Svorenssen about her, preferring not to cloud his own first impressions with those of anyone else.

Fortunately, as they turned south from Franklin, a car pulled out from a parking place near the corner - for otherwise the block was jammed all the way to Hollywood Boulevard at the foot of the gentle slope. Behind them as they emerged, rose the steeper slope of the Hollywood Hills. Facing them, directly across Sycamore Drive, was the fabled House of Wu.

Its lower surfaces masked by twin palisades of small cypresses, its upper three stories rose square and plain and somewhat weathered and disappointing to the detective. It was faced with brick of a burnt orange hue, with black shutters and portico. Only the pagoda-like upcurve of the entrance top suggested the Orient in any way.

Nor did its appearance improve upon closer approach. The bricks were stained with years of usage and the black surface of the portico revealed chips and scars that showed the natural light colored wood beneath the lacquer.

III

WHILE THEY waited, after Dr. Svorenssen pushed the bell for admittance, another couple joined them at the double front door. They were man and woman, both past middle age and waging a losing battle against the encroachments of time. Despite a deep suntan and an obviously dyed black mustache, the man's face, like his protruding belly, had run to flab, as had the lady's countenance beneath over-heavy makeup and a bright henna frame of thinning curls, although her stomach was rigidly corseted to give her body the overall appearance of a short, thick salami.

"Going to Mei T'ang's?" the lady asked. At Dr. Svorenssen's assent, she began to spout an involved reminiscence of having first met the actress at Malibu Beach in a mix-up of cabanas, a discourse mercifully cut short by the buzz of the admittance signal.

In a city whose interior surfaces are devoted to the promulgation of a merciless maximum of light, the inside of the House of Wu was, to Charlie Chan, pleasantly somber and shabby. It looked lived in and enjoyed. Nor was any plaster visible save on the ceiling. The walls were covered with deep orange floral paper, the interior woodwork, like that of the exterior, was black.

Halfway down the passage that ran the east-west length of the building, staircase and elevator faced one another. The plump, hennaed lady pushed the lift button in a flurry of jeweled bracelets and wrapped her lynx stole around her with a regality that failed to come off.

When the elevator failed to respond instantly, she muttered something about "these old buildings." Her escort; smiled apologetically beneath his bravely dyed mustache.

After a few moments, the lady said, "I'm going to walk it Come on, Harold, it's good for your figure."

With an eloquent glance at Charlie Chan and Eric Svorenssen, Harold followed her up the carpeted staircase in silence The dentist watched their progress until they were well out of sight and murmured, "It doesn't require a detective to spot a henpecked husband."

"Not husband," said Chan

The dentist blinked his surprise, said. "How can you be sure?"

"No ring in nose," said Chan.

"Oh, brother!" moaned Dr. Svorenssen. "Charlie, some times you're harder to take than the Chinese water torture."

Following a series of creaks and sighs, the elevator door slowly opened in front of them and they got in. Svorenssen punched the top button and, with another series of dolorous protests, the lift began an unsteady ascent that reminded Chan of the hideous time when, despite eloquent protest, he had been coerced into riding the back of a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then back up to its top.

There was, to a passenger in this elevator, a somewhat similar sense of being trapped on the brink of imminent disaster.

At the second floor, amid another series of sounds of deep emotional disturbance, it halted jarringly and settled at a slight tilt. The door opened and a man and woman got in - not the two who had defected to the staircase.

The woman who entered wore the rags of a once-handsome face like a gallant scarecrow, made no attempt to hide the scars of time beyond such diversion of viewer interest as was afforded by an elegant rep-silk pants suit of dark blue decorated vividly with poker hands.

She lighted up at sight of Dr. Svorenssen, seized both his hands and cried, "Doc, you old Torquemada - and how are your eyeteeth?"

"Happily long gone and unmourned," replied the dentist, kissing the colorful apparition on one tan leathery cheek.

"Let a fellow in, will you?" said another voice, a voice rich, deep and slightly querulous. It belonged to a tall, languid, superbly elegant man whose features bore the familiar landmarks of long film stardom. It was, Chan recognized, Gilman Roberts, whose success as a player of scores of suave villainous roles on both the small and large screens was matched only by his emergence as a leading American cultural champion; as antique buyer for a major department store chain and a cookbook author.

The creaking elevator protested even more loudly at this addition to its load, but joviality rode the rest of the way to the roof with Chan and Dr. Svorenssen. Yet there was something in the caged atmosphere that caused the detective inspector's psychological neck hairs to tingle a minor alarm.

It had entered the ancient lift with the newcomers - an overnote of heartiness in Gilman Roberts' drawling accents, a withdrawal by the ravaged lady in poker hand silk. Before the lift passed the third floor on its way to the top of the House of Wu, Chan was quite certain that these two detested one another.

He thought, Love turned to hate is deepest of all hatreds...

Briefly, out of long habit, he speculated as to which of them, man or woman, had originally done what to the other and which had paid the heaviest penalty, might still be paying it. Then he dismissed the thoughts as none of his business and therefore unworthy of his time.

As the decades moved past him with increasing rapidity; Chan found himself getting more and more wary of wasting what his mind, if not his body, told him was an ever-decreasing margin of life.

He dismissed that thought as being miserly and even less worthy than the one that had prompted it. As in many other observations on the mystery of living, Chan's three principal mentors - Confucius, Lao T'se and Li Tai Po, were agreed that the hoarding of anything is the most useless of human instincts, since by its very nature it prevents the miser from enjoying what he saves.

Still, there was a current between tall man and ravaged lady, he thought, as they at last left the Toonerville lift...

... to emerge in a glassed roof garden of an infinite variety of Chinese blooms, shrubs and dwarf trees, set in hydroponic beds of purest quartz pebbles whose liquid nutrients made the atmosphere as richly humid as the flowers made it rich in scent. On the graveled walks of the conservatory and in a rectangular center area, groups of men and women conversed, smoked and sipped drinks of various hues.

Opposite the elevator door, which had creaked shut behind them, was a bar of ebony with gleaming silver fittings, being served by a young Asian in a close fitting, bright red, high collared jacket.

What used to be called a Sun Yat Sen jacket, Chan thought ruefully, before it became revived as a Mao - inevitably he was reminded of the old French aphorism to the effect that, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Somewhere in the middle distance, he could hear the shrillness of the fat henna-head's voice reminding her husband that their doctor had warned him never to take more than two cocktails.

Hell hath no fury like a wife unchecked, he thought, deciding the paraphrase had some merit.

A young Chinese-American woman, her face bland and pleasant within its border of closely bound black hair, her slender body graceful within its sheath of black watered silk, approached them and greeted Dr. Svorenssen warmly before turning to Chan.

She bowed, said, "Inspector Chan, I am Ah-Nah, Madame Wu's companion. She wishes to see you before she receives her other guests. I'm so glad you could come."

She spoke softly, swiftly, both as if she did not wish to be overheard and as if she wished to waste a minimum of time on the rituals of formality. Chan looked down at her, liked what he saw, then turned to his friend.

"Go ahead, Charlie," said Svorenssen. "If Mei T'ang wants to see you first, she will. Meanwhile, I'll try to keep the bar from falling over."

As the former film star's companion preceded him along a path that led to a Chinese blue wall pierced by an ornate closed door of red lacquer and gold, Chan saw that, for all her grace, she moved with the tautness of tension. Thus far, he concluded, Mei T'ang's little party had not proved to be exactly a relaxed and relaxing occasion.

Having opened the ornate door and ushered Chan inside Ah-Nah left him there. The room he found himself in was long, low-ceilinged and twilight dim. Off-white-walls were hung with priceless tapestries and lined, here and there, with almost equally rare low cabinets, brightly carved and painted on an ivory lacquer base.

His hostess sat on a sort of throne chair on a small dais at the far end of the room, her hands planted firmly around the ends of the knobs. She wore a richly brocaded mandarin robe whose wealth of gold threading seemed to flicker with light even in the half-dark room. As Chan drew slowly close to her, she made no sign of greeting. Shadowed by some angle of the dim indirect lighting, her face was inscrutable.

As he came closer, it seemed to Chan that Mei T'ang was still a very beautiful woman - until he got close enough to see that she was a very dead one.

IV

CHAN STOOD perfectly still, staring at the body of his hostess. His first thought, there in the dim light, was that she must have been dead long enough for rigor mortis to have set in. In the soft warmth of the room's temperature, however, this would require a matter of hours since her demise. But it seemed unlikely that, with a party to prepare for, the former screen star would have placed herself on her lacquered throne so early, or that her absence would not have been noticed and her body discovered long before the guests began arriving.

He took two steps forward and peered more closely at the corpse. From the discoloration of her face, he had no doubt that she had been strangled. Also, this close but quick examination revealed that she had not been dead as long as Chan first thought. Extending a tentative forefinger, he touched the exquisite fabric of the mandarin coat that covered her once famous body from throat to heels.

Although the surface of the silk itself was sleek and soft, he could feel the stiff sizing beneath. And the embroidery, intricately laced with real gold thread, was firm and heavy. It was the robe, rather than rigor mortis, that was holding he, body upright and in place.

First message from the corpse, he thought. Mei T'ang Wu had been quite freshly killed. It occurred to him that she would not be able to enjoy the inevitable notoriety that must follow so sensational a demise - not at least on an' earthly plane.

Stepping backward, he regarded the body as a whole, for the first time noted the pair of black gloves that lay in its lap. Whose - the murderer's gloves or those of the victim? Discovery would have to await the arrival of the police.

Chan glanced around the room, saw the small ivory plastic telephone resting on one of the priceless cabinets that lined the lower walls. He crossed to it, paused for moment to clear his thought; before picking up the handset. Then he punched Central Police Headquarters and asked to speak to Captain Pat Jarvis. It took less than two minutes to get Jarvis on the line, two minutes during which the room's silence grew increasingly oppressive.

"Who is it?" harked the captain's voice.

"Charlie Chan at your service."

"For Christ's sake!" said Jarvis. "I thought you were tending your ladybugs in Hawaii. Are you in town on holiday or working?"

Chan explained precisely where he was and what he was doing. Jarvis said, "Jesus!" Then, "Stand by, I'd better take this one myself. Mei T'ang Wu? My God, I must have seen a dozen of her pictures. Can you play watchdog till I get there?"

"Can watch body but not guests," said Chan.

"Do just that, Charlie. Stand by."

Chan hung up. His feelings at this moment were curiously mixed. In his long and illustrious career as a police detective, he had been forced to deal repeatedly with every variety of those human failings that are labeled crimes by the law he served. Save on the rare occasions when it could be justified, he considered murder one of the three most evil types of felony.

The snuffing out of another human life to him was unforgivable unless the slayer was forced to kill in self defense. The other two categories he found most loathsome were kidnapping and blackmail because of the continuing unhappiness they inevitably caused not only their victims but those most closely associated with slayer and slain.

All in all, however, murder was the worst...

To Chan, there was nothing romantic about murder. It was dirty and all too often meant interminable toil before a murderer was brought to justice. Not infrequently, Chan had wondered, after dealing with a most atrocious killing, if the very filth whose cleansing was his job had not rubbed off on his own psyche. He who digs in dirt seldom keeps clean fingernails.

Though Chan tried to force himself to feel disgust a faint thrill of excitement tugged at his nerve ends, made taut the muscles of his stomach. Here were i a body, dead, strangled, and a killer at large. It was with difficulty that Chan reminded himself he was not a Los Angeles detective but a mere vacationer from Honolulu, that his proper role in this affair must be that of discoverer of the crime and thus only a witness for the prosecution.

The tautness in his nerve ends persisted, causing him to shrug and sigh and, from long habit, to look carefully about the exotic room in which he stood face to face with the corpse of Mei T'ang Wu. From long experience, he knew that, if corpses had messages to give the experienced investigator, so, more often than not, did the immediate environment in which they were found.

Moving softly, silently and with deceptive swiftness, Chan took a look around. He left the gloves on the dead woman's lap alone. It was not his job in any way to touch the body. The reading of whatever further messages it might convey was up to the trained scientists of the coroner's office and the police scientific crime analysts.

He examined the soft, priceless carpet that filled the room almost from wall to wall and on which the late film star's throne rested. As he moved, something bright was reflected in the dim light, something that winked up at him out of the deep pile of the carpet slightly to the left of the throne. He moved toward it, bent down, drawn by another sparkling highlight, picked it up.

It was a golden house fly with diamond eyes and tiny wings of transparent white jade framed in golden wire that retraced each tiny segment of the insect's flight appendages. A magnificent work of the jeweler's art, one that, even there in the carefully arranged artificial twilight, bore the unmistakable stamp of having been manufactured in the land of his ancestors.

He was still peering at it, entranced, when his concentration was shattered by a knock at the door.

Chan moved to answer it but, as he did so, the knock sounded again - from behind him. It had come from the far side of a less conspicuous portal, set in the wall opposite the elaborate entrance through which he had come - a door Chan had taken for that of a closet.

He took it for granted that it was the police that were knocking and again was wrong. Even his brief vacation, he decided, had made him careless as he was all but engulfed by an invasion of a half-dozen men and women in starched and spotless white uniforms, pushing before them a pair of portable steel tables on wheels, tables laden with an assortment of covered steel food containers, cutlery, plates and paper napkins.

An immense black man rendered over seven feet tall by an enormous chef's hat said, "Jason Hollywood Catering - do we set up in here?"

For once, the veteran detective inspector was nonplused. Taking his silence for assent, the chief said, "Lay it out, team," and the room became as busy as the celebrated Walt Disney version of Santa's workshop under the unseeing eyes of the corpse, while the redolence of fine cooking filled the death chamber.

To Chan's relief, at that moment the burly shoulders of Captain Patrick Jerome Jarvis blocked the doorway through which the caterers had just erupted, backed by a pair of uniformed policemen. He, too, looked in speechless dismay at the unwanted activity, then spotted Charlie Chan and came over to him.

"For Chrissakes," he said, "who ordered the food?"

"Not unworthy self," said Chan. "Comestibles precede coppers by gnat's eyelash."

Captain Jarvis's sunbronzed countenance contracted in a wince; He said, "If that came from Confucius, I'll eat my Borsalino, feather and all."

"Difficult to prove origin of wise saying," said Chan. Then, lapsing into excellent English, he gave Jarvis a rundown on what he knew in two concise paragraphs, concluding with, "Suggest you move caterers out of room."

"I'd better send them back where they came from," Jarvis said, and did so. Not until this was done was any sort of procedural order attained.

Watching, Chan was interested to discover that the door through which they had made their surprise entrance led to a windowless central foyer on which fronted a large freight elevator with quilt-hung walls to prevent furniture damage. He noted that another door, across from the throne room entrance, stood - ajar and entered it to discover himself in the late film star's study-laboratory with its curious jars of various Chinese medicinal roots and the dried bodies of what had been lizards, frogs and fish.

His nostrils dilated as he smelled the fading after-aroma of some personal scent. Perfume it was not, the odor was too light for a perfume's heavy base. It could have been that of a lady's cologne or of a man's after-shave lotion - he could not be sure. Nor could he identify the brand, which he might have done had he entered the room a few minutes earlier.

All he was sure of was that he would recognize 'it if he encountered it again. It had a lilac base, whether real or manufactured he could not be certain, though the odds' were heavily in favor of the synthetic article. He only hoped a number of the guests in the conservatory were not wearing it.

Peering into the nearest of the old-fashioned apothecaries' jars, Chan discovered that the twisted orchid root it contained had a pair of spots upon its otherwise intact surface. Closer examination revealed them to be life-sized insects, apparently crafted of jewels and precious minerals and metals.

He opened his left hand, which still contained the handsome, elegant and beautifully crafted artificial housefly he had picked up beside the throne chair of Mei T'ang Wu. He studied it, looked again at the insects on the exotic root in the jar, then carried it to a casement window through which the late afternoon sunlight streamed at a flat angle from over the shoulder of Laurel Canyon.

Until then, Chan's senses had been in a state of general alert. Now they moved into narrower focus and intensified.

One by one, he examined the elements of Chinese pharmaceutics in the jars, moving from one to another, studying each in turn, until the eleventh he examined held' his interest. He had already determined that no two of the jeweled insects were alike - just as no two of the objects on which they rested were similar.

What held Chan's attention was a curiously carved ginseng root, gnarled and twisted like a deformed parsnip. On its curved surfaces reposed a pair of flies, one of which, from his relatively distant point of vision, seemed the twin of the jeweled insect he 'had picked up from the carpet in the other room. He looked from the gem in his hand to that in the jar, frowning.

Strange, Chan thought, no other two alike...

V

IT WAS A puzzle whose solution would have to wait opportunity for closer exam nation. At the moment, with no standing, official or otherwise, in the investigation, Chan had no desire to disturb anything in the rooftop apartment where murder had so recently been committed.

He should have turned the insect over 'to Pat Jarvis. But the two lapses in his thinking - that of taking for granted first that the door in the death room led to a closet rather than to the freight elevator foyer, second that the caterers were the police, had led to this third lapse.

Chan itched to get a closer look at the strange contents of the jars since he had never seen anything like them, had never heard of such strange examples of what appeared to be the ancient craft of Chinese jewel making lifted to its highest plane - beautiful baubles for a Han emperor or a Mongol prince grown sufficiently effete by residence in china to have developed a taste for objets d'art of such refinement and such delicacy.

This strange room, like the reception room where Mei T'ang's body presumably still sat on its throne chair in death, had another door. This one, Chan determined to open before another invasion caught him off guard.

Chan moved cautiously - but not cautiously enough. As he, peered through the partly opened portal, a large dark cloth was flung over his head, effectively blanketing both his vision and his breath. A pair of invisible arms pinioned him briefly, then he was flung back into the laboratory-study onto his rump in a most undignified fashion.

When Chan got the cloth, a large lavender bath-towel, from his head, he was sitting on the carpet, facing the door through which he had just peered. It was again closed, enigmatic, mocking. The crumpled towel which he had been holding in his hand he dropped beside him.

It did not surprise him to discover that the priceless insect jewel had vanished.

* * *

Chan took a number of deep breaths before rising to his feet with unexpected grace for a man of stocky figure. He was reminding himself with every ounce of wisdom he and his ancestors had amalgamated that he must not allow anger to cause him to lose further control of self.

For Chan was bone-angry. This last humiliation, coming on top of his previous lapses, had heaped injury on top of insult. Nor did the fact that the injury was limited to his pride make it any the less painful.

And this, too, rankled the usual serenity of his soul.

As his deductive faculties became operative once again, he realized all too clearly that he must have been observed, at least while he was in this strange room. Otherwise, how could he have been ambushed so neatly - and how would his observer have known he held the jeweled insect in his hand?

The questions answered themselves - but they failed to indicate who had observed him, or how.

He opened the door again, this time without untoward incident, and discovered himself to be in a bathroom equipped with lavender face and hand towels, washcloths and toilet tissue. In contrast to the other rooms he had visited in the House of Wu, there was nothing Oriental about either the plumbing or the bathroom decor. Folding the towel that had blinded him neatly, Chan replaced it on the rack alongside the shower-tub.

Then he examined the door to the laboratory he had just left. It opened and closed without sound. This, at any rate, accounted for the fact of his being observed, if not the identity of whoever had spied on him. Only the memory of the faint scent remained... unidentifiable in the melange of perfume trails that assailed his nostrils in what was evidently the powder room for the reception.

The other door to the bathroom was abruptly opened, bringing with it a ground swell of conversation from the conservatory. The rattled but still attractive lady in the blue pants suit with the bright poker hands looked at him with sardonically uplifted left eyebrow.

"Really, Mr. Chan!" she said. "It never occurred to me, in all the years I have followed your career, that you did your sleuthing in a ladies' lounge."

Chan mustered the shattered remnants of his poise to reply, "Strange house offer strange trails. Excuse, please."

He slid past her near-famine-thin figure to return to the conservatory, where the guests were milling about in apparent confusion. He noted the two uniformed policemen guarding the main elevator entrance, wondering what steps his friend Captain Jarvis had taken to hold possible witnesses for questioning. It occurred to him that a long evening lay ahead for most of them - long and hungry since the caterers had been so summarily sent back where they came from.

Appetizers were reduced to a few greasy crumbs on the serving platters, but the drinks continued to flow without interruption. Chan suppressed a smile, realizing that Captain Jarvis was evidently proceeding on the old in vino veritas assumption. "In wine is truth."

He hoped it worked. In his own considerable experience of crime allied with alcohol, Chan had long since reached the conclusion that the combination all too often resulted in in vino vast confusion.

Dr. Svorenssen spotted him and came over, to thrust a drink in his hand and say, "Charlie, will you please tell me what in hell is going on?"

Chan sipped his drink carefully, said, "Charlie Chan like three monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil - above all speak no evil. Besides, Charlie Chan not know."

"Come off it, Charlie," said Svorenssen. "Ah-Nah took you to see Mei T'ang. You've been gone almost an hour. And the police have been holding us here for the past forty minutes."

The elderly couple who had taken the stairs up instead of the elevator approached and the hennaed wife said, "Why can't we leave? This is a violation of our civil rights. I won't stand for it. Harold, speak to somebody!"

Her voice was shrill and cut through the sound in the glass-roofed conservatory like a laser beam. As if in answer to it, a young plainclothes officer moved front and center before the portable bar and announced that all who wished to depart could do so as soon as they had left their names, addresses and telephone numbers with the officers at the door.

The hennaed henpecker gave a triumphant toss of her head and trumpeted. "You see, Harold all it takes is a little gumption!"

"Watch your language, Rosina darling," drawled the elegant Gilman Roberts, who had just joined the group.

"You're dating yourself. Gumption! Really...?" He looked after the departing couple in wonderment before turning to Chan.

"We really would like to know what has happened," the actor said. "I suppose somebody stole one of Mei T'ang's precious pretties although this -" with a sweeping gesture that indicated the policemen at the portals "- does seem a classic case of over-reaction, even for a lady as volatile as Mei T'ang."

Chan regarded the tall, elegant actor impassively. It was evident from his question, however indirectly delivered, that word of the murder of their hostess had not yet been announced to the assembled guests. The Honolulu chief of detectives therefore held his own silence. He felt he had no right to interfere with the procedure established by Pat Jarvis, even though, personally, he would have liked to watch and weigh reactions to its announcement.

At that moment, the shrill voice of the hennaed henpecker again cut through the moist, perfumed air of the conservatory, as she cried, "If you don't let us out right now, I'll see to it that Harold has your badge."

"Ah, gumption!" sighed Gilman Roberts. "What violence is committed in thy name."

Dr. Svorenssen, whose attention had been temporarily diverted by the overloud exit of the elderly couple, returned his attention to Chan and repeated his demand to know what was going on. Chan blandly ignored him and said to the tall actor, "Would like identity of loud lady just leaving."

"Believe it or not," replied Roberts, "the little man she bosses around is a veteran Hollywood producer. The name is Heinemann - Harold Heinemann. That of his louder, though not necessarily better, half is Rosina. Would you believe she was once a star in Our Gang comedies?"

Chan said, "Husband boss people around all day. Wife boss husband around all night - right?"

"That's about it," said the actor. "As a matter of fact, Harold has been signed to produce the picture this party is all about,"

Chan looked accusingly at Dr. Svorenssen, said, "You not tell Charlie movie involved."

"So solly, Cholly," said Svorenssen. "Not remember everything."

"Oh, shut up, Eric," said Roberts. "Not funny." Then, to Chan, "It's one of those hit-or-miss deals everything in pictures seems to be nowadays. We make a feature film. If it goes, we use it to pilot a TV series. If they don't spot the series opposite a show with a high Nielson rating, it runs a few seasons and we all get rich and go to Switzerland and lie around on our numbered bank accounts. If it doesn't go, we pick ourselves up and look for another vehicle."

"And Mei T'ang will star?" Chan asked.

"She will co-star -" Roberts stressed the word hard - "with me. You see, in this sort of movie, in a..."

Whatever else the actor was about to say was interrupted by the abrupt opening of the lacquered doors to the throne room followed by the emergence of the ravaged lady in the poker-hand pants suit. Closing them abruptly behind her, she paused in silence until she had the attention of all in the conservatory save for a few drunks otherwise occupied in potted palm alcoves.

"Kids," she said in her. husky, penetrating, somewhat graveled voice, "you can all go home now. Our hostess has been murdered!"

The room hushed.

VI

ERIC SVORENSSEN pointed the forefinger of his highball holding hand at Chan and said, "You knew! Why didn't you. tell us?"

Gil Roberts said, "Probably, Doc, because he had orders not to."

Despite the languidness of his stance and the drawl of his voice, the actor spoke with authority. Svorenssen deflated and said, "Is that so, Charlie?"

Chan sipped his drink and said nothing.. Gil Roberts, muttering an excuse, took off after the lady in the pokerhands pant suit, who was heading for the passenger elevator...

Chan said, "Who's the lady in the pants suit?"

Svorenssen said, "That's Claudia Haynes. She has an overbite due to an uncorrected faulty occlusion when she was a child.,'

Shaking his head, Chan said, "Doc, I asked who she was, not for her dental chart."

"Sorry, Charlie, but I'm all shook up. Is Mei T'ang really dead?"

Chan nodded, repeated his question about the woman who had made the announcement, who was slipping into the elevator with Gil Roberts securely latched to her elbow.

Eric Svorenssen, his face drained of color, said, "Now she'll never get the eyetooth root-canal work done. Charlie, you wouldn't believe -"

"Who is she, Doc?" Chan committed the rare rudeness Of an interruption...

"Oh..." Svorenssen snapped out of it, said, "Claudia? She's an agent, what they call a package dealer. She's the one who put the deal together." He put down his near-empty glass on a small table, said, "Charlie, excuse me. I think I'm going to be sick."

Looking after the dentist until he disappeared in the lavender bathroom at a trot, the Hawaiian detective inspector turned his attention to the reactions of the others in the conservatory. For the moment, it was still a tableau, with most of those present still frozen into immobility by shock at Claudia Haynes's abrupt announcement. A sort of non-conversation piece, he thought, wishing he knew who they all were.

Even as he watched, the tableau broke up. Voices rose on every side, voices expressing disbelief for the most part as the message took its time to sink in. Then the noise level rose higher and the guests, like Caesar's Gaul, divided themselves into three parts.

One group headed for the elevator to give names and addresses to the police guard stationed there. Another headed back to the bar, while a third milled aimlessly about.

Strange scene, strange happening, Chan thought, wondering who, if any among them, might have information that could lead to the identity of the person unknown by whom the crime had been committed. He heard one woman, denied the use of a telephone by the police, say, "But if I don't get this to Sheila first, I'm off her payroll."

Sheila, Chan surmised correctly, was almost certainly a screen gossip columnist. He was reminded again of the inevitable notoriety that must follow the dramatic murder of such.. famed, exotic public personality as Mei T'ang Wu had been.

It was a crime that demanded a quick solution for man!, reasons, not the least of them police prestige. He began to map out proper procedure and again was forced to remind himself of his entire lack of any status, official or private, sine.! his possible client was the victim.

A voice at his elbow said, "Inspector Chan?"

It brought him out of his brief reverie. A tall, reedy young man in a grey suit and blue sports shirt stood beside him, added, "Sir, Captain Jarvis wants to see you."

As the detective ushered l him through the bright lacquered door, Mei T'ang'; companion, Ah-Nah, was ushered out. She said nothing to Chan as they passed, but her luminous dark eyes looked up eloquently into his with what he took to be a silent appeal to help.

The twilight of Mei T'ang', reception room had been banished and the lights were on bright and full. The body had already been removed and, despite the fact there were a half dozen persons present, the long chamber felt strangely empty. Even Pat Jarvis seemed to feel the eerie personality vacuum created by the departure of the former star's corpse. In death, her presence still dominated her surroundings as it had in life.

Jarvis said, "This one looks like a ring-tailed doozy." Then, to a pair of technicians busy by the now empty throne chair, "Don't forget to dust the gloves for latents." And, back to Chan, "Anything you've got, Charlie."

Chan gave it to him from the beginning in Dr. Svoressen's office. When he got to the episode of the lavender bath towel and the theft of the jeweled fly, Jarvis slapped the flat of a hand hard against the priceless antique chest on which he was resting his rump.

"Son of a bitch!" he said. "Right under our noses! How do you like that for nerve?"

"Not much," said Chan. He lapsed into his pidgin to add, "Humble self much embarrassed."

"You're embarrassed!" said the captain of detectives. "How the hell do you think I feel? I don't suppose you have any idea who did it?"

Chan shook his head, told him about the perfume, concluded, "Not much of a clue, I fear. Sorry."

"Not your fault, Charlie," said Jarvis, shaking his head like a mastiff emerging from the Santa Monica surf. Then, "And those God damned caterers... You know, Charlie, if I can find who called them for delivery at that precise moment, I believe we'd have this case wrapped up."

"Problem with call?"

"You can say that again' We don't even know it came from this building. Just a voice, apparently female, demanding immediate service; For a job like this, the Jason service has a stand-by system so they won't clutter up a party they're hired for until they're needed."

Chan said, "Would give much to know what Mei T'ang wished to see humble self about."

"You and me both!" Captain Jarvis paused, scowled at the tapestry on the opposite wall. Then he said, "Charlie, I don't know how to ask this of you!"

Chan said, "Best way ask. Then Charlie tell yes or no."

"I wish you'd stop the double-talk," said the police captain. "How the hell can I ask a favor of you? You may be out of your jurisdiction, but you still outrank me, and I want your help."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just stay with it. You have an inside track to begin with because Mei T'ang asked to see you. You found the body, found the jeweled fly, you called me. Do what comes naturally, learn what you can. Frankly, we're stumped."

"Case early," said Chan. "Time needed for key." Then, "I'd like to know more about those jade and gold objects the fly came from.'?

"I haven't had time to examine them thoroughly," said Jarvis, standing upright.: "Let's take a look at them right now."

They left the scene of the murder, crossed the service elevator foyer to the laboratory. On the way, Chan remarked, "The black gloves - did they yield anything?"

"Don't expect much from them, Charlie, even after the lab boys have tested them. They're on sale in every department store in Los Angeles - and in at least half the small clothing shops."

"Men's or women's?" Chan asked.

"Women's - but that doesn't necessarily mean a thing as you very well know." They reached the laboratory and Captain Jarvis looked at the weird jewels in the big glass jars. He said, "Jesus, what in the hell are they?"

Chan gave him his theory. When they reached the ginseng root, he pointed out the two flies, revealed the one whose duplicate he had found by the throne.

Jarvis squinted at it, said, "It could have fallen from one of the other weirdoes."

"I think not - no other two are alike." He pointed at the bizarre object in the jar before them, said, "I'd like to examine this one more closely, please."

"Go ahead, Charlie, though I'm damned if I see how it ties in with the murder."

Chan unscrewed the light metal lid of the jar without difficulty, plunged a hand in and withdrew the jeweled ginseng root. The moment his fingers caressed the sleek surface, he knew that it was not jade he was holding. It felt colder, greasier, totally different in texture. With each second of manual contact, the resemblance to jade: grew increasingly superficial.

He turned his attention to the two jeweled flies and here no tactile test was needed. Viewed closely, they were obviously inferior imitations of the brilliantly crafted insect he had picked up from the carpet by the dead film star's throne. Neither the gold nor the diamonds were genuine and the wired-in wing surfaces were mica rather than thin slices of white jade.

Chan explained what he had discovered, concluded, "Perhaps suggest something to agile police brain."

"Hell, yes," said Jarvis. "Suggest substitution to agile police brain. I wonder how many of them are phonies."

"Leave to expert hands," said Chan, "but suggest many if not all. Meanwhile, wonder if dead lady have keen eyesight."

"Okay, Charlie - and thanks. So far, this case has more questions than answers."

"Ask right questions - get right answers," said Chan.

"Confucius?"

"No, Socrates," was the reply.

VII

IN THE conservatory, Charlie Chan found Svorenssen waiting for him almost alone in the recently filled room. The dentist, looking unhappily sober, was staring with gloom at the pale dregs of the highball in his right hand.

Chan said, "No need to wait, Doc. We're right near my hotel."

"I have a message for you," said Svorenssen. "Ah-Nah - Mei T'ang's companion - wants to talk to you."

"So...?" said Chan, remembering clearly the look of appeal she had sent his way when they passed in the doorway.

"She had to go out - something about the funeral arrangements. I took the liberty of telling her where you are staying."

"That's okay, Doc. I want to talk to her."

"Also, we're invited to a sort of wake at Claudia's apartment downstairs. I told you I'd ask you, so now I've done it and you can refuse."

"On contrary - I accept," Chan told him.

Recalling his precarious ride up in the elevator, Chan elected to walk the stairs down to the second floor. There were perhaps a baker's dozen of guests in the shank lean agent's apartment, which covered one third of one side of the passage that divided lengthwise the lower floors of the building. While this made Claudia Haynes's residence considerably smaller than that of Mei T'ang, with the conservatory aside, it was still a large old-fashioned apartment.

Claudia had furnished it comfortably with a hodgepodge of antiques and newer pieces that somehow managed to achieve a precarious harmony - light cane-back French Provincial chairs cheek by jowl with dark, heavy carved Spanish tables. A pair of curved elephant tusks, their tips almost reaching the ceiling, rose like parentheses on either side of the wide doorway between living and dining rooms.

Chan spotted a genuine Fernand Leger among the paintings and photographic blowups of film personalities and movie stills that were spotted casually along the walls.

Claudia greeted them at the door, glass in hand, gave Eric Svorenssen an embrace and then said to the detective, "Well, Charlie Chan, who dun it?"

Chan replied, "Identity of murderer await police announcement. Till then, no can say."

He had long since run out of replies to a question so often asked that it bored him - but that he was too polite to ignore. He was ushered into a study to the right of the living room and ensconced on a worn brown leather sofa, where Gil Roberts placed a drink in his fist.

The actor said, "Claudia's cellar runs entirely to vodka and Fresca, so I took the liberty of bringing yours for you."

"Many thanks," said Chan. He sipped the drink, found it palatable, then said to the towering deputy host, "Tell me, what is a package dealer, Hollywood style, please."

Roberts dropped gracefully to a hassock close to the sofa, hugged a well tailored knee, said, "That could be a long order, Mr. Chan, but I'll try to be brief. A package dealer, Hollywood style; is usually an agent who puts his - in Claudia's case, her - clients together on a project which is then peddled to a studio or an independent distributor as a whole."

"In case of the vehicle for Mei T'ang and yourself?"

"Claudia had Mei T'ang and myself as clients also a half dozen; other actors. She owned; the screen play, which is the only thing she paid for' had Larry Kettering to direct and tied in Harold Heinemann as producer. She had the Ace-Keystone people ready to supply studio facilities and two major distributors begging for options on the finished product. It was a ripe vehicle."

"Name of vehicle?" Chan asked.

The actor shrugged. "Who knows what it would have been called by the time it came out? The working title was Lady of Jade."

"Most fitting," said the detective. "Who put up the money to bring back such an old star?"

Claudia Haynes swung into the foreground, taking over from Gil Roberts. She said, "Mei T'ang was putting up the big nut. Ever since Bette Davis made her comeback in Baby Jane and Crawford in Sweet Charlotte, she's been hugging me to put her back together again in a suitable vehicle."

The antagonism between actor and agent etched in acid Gil Roberts' tone as he said, "That's not entirely true, Clau-Clau, darling - you did at least half the bugging yourself. How long is it since you swung a big package deal?"

Venom crackled silently in the air like static electricity. Claudia snapped, "Look who's talking! How long has it been since you've been even a semi-regular in a TV series?"

Roberts beamed at her happily, jiggled the fee in his glass as he looked down at Claudia from his great height and murmured sweetly, "It has long been my fond belief that it's up to a competent agent to get client parts."

For a moment, Chan thought Claudia was going to fling her glass in Gil Roberts' handsome face. She took a deep breath, then said, "It's up to the client to make good..."

It was weak and she knew it, for she turned to Chan and said, "Sorry, Charlie. We must sound like a flock of jackals squabbling over a dead tiger." Then, to Roberts, "By the way, where were you when Mei T'ang was strangled?"

Roberts' smile widened. He lifted his glass and said, "As far as I know, I was with you, sweetie. I told Captain Jarvis as much upstairs. What did you tell him?"

"None of your damned business, you overstuffed Westphalian smoked butt," said Claudia, on which tone the scene ended as its two chief players drifted apart.

Chan cogitated over what he had just seen and heard, sipping his highball sparingly. Had Claudia's final retort been a trifle too vehement? He wondered, thought mebbeso, mebbeso and was grateful neither Dr. Svorenssen nor Pat Jarvis was present to hear him utter the pidgin aloud.

He wondered if Claudia's final lashout had not covered a very real relief at Robert's admission that he had covered her for the time of the murder by providing her with an alibi. Until then, Chan had only mildly considered the movements of possible suspects at the time of the murder, leaving such research to Captain Jarvis and his interrogators.

Now, he could not help wondering. After all, he had been closer to the crime, both in space and in time, than had any other officer of the law, official or otherwise. Point by point, he went over what had happened that afternoon, from the moment he and Dr. Svorenssen approached the orange-brick apartment house the murdered film star had built.

His dentist friend returned with a freshly filled glass and said, "Charlie, there's a call for you." He indicated a telephone on a low refectory table across the room, a phone hitherto masked from the detective by a clump of people busily arguing whether a celebrated current male screen star were a non-actor or the genuine article.

Chan said, "Excuse me, please." He picked up the handset, said, "Hello - Chan here."

"This is Ah-Nah, Madame Wu's companion. Doctor Svorenssen says you are at the Hollywood Roosevelt."

"That's right," said Chan. He was about to give the number of his suite when a feminine voice remembered from upstairs cut in on another extension.

"Will you get the hell off this God damn line?" it said angrily. "I've got to get through to Sheila."

"One moment, please," said Chan. Then, to Ah-Nah, "Are you still there, Miss?"

"Yes."

"Nine-sixteen," said Chan. "Are you going to get off this copulating line or do I call operator and cut you off?" said the intruding voice angrily.

"It's already past eleven," said Ah-Nah, sounding confused. "I'll meet you in the hotel at midnight."

"I'll tear out the line if you don't get off," said the lady who wanted to talk to Sheila.

"What's your room number?" Ah-Nah asked.

"Nine-sixteen!" Chan could not be sure whether he got through or not because the intruder chose that moment to kill the call.

He returned to Doctor Svorenssen, said, "If Ah-Nah calls back after I leave, tell her I'm at the hotel."

"Right on!" said the dentist, who had recovered his interrupted cocktail-hour glow.

Chan wandered through the apartment, taking in the scene. He spotted three other telephones, one of them in use by a horse-faced female in a splashy flowered print that reminded him of that long-ago era when chintz furniture covers were well in style. Standing behind her, he was debating a suitable reprisal against this one-track lady whose determination had probably ruined his call from Ah-Nah.

But as soon as the thoughts of reprisal rose, Chan dismissed them with some sense of shame as not merely unworthy of his ancestors but unworthy of himself.

Chan lingered another half hour, awaiting a call-back from Ah-Nah, then decided it would be wise to stroll the two blocks to his hotel.

Entering the lobby from the Hollywood Boulevard side, he looked around for the young woman, failed to see her. It occurred to him that he had better go upstairs, in case she had heard him correctly despite their garbled conversation, to see if she were waiting in the corridor outside his room. By his wristwatch, it was exactly six minutes past twelve when he entered the elevator.

Entering his room, Chan called the desk and left a message to have Ah-Nah call him when she arrived and asked for him. Then, feeling suddenly fatigued and let down after the events of the past seven hours, he took off his shoes and socks and jacket and loosened his shirt. Stretching out on the sofa, he turned on a tolerable late-show movie and settled down to wait.

When he awakened, it was past five in the morning and his head felt stuffed with cotton. Fearing lest he might have slumbered through Ah-Nah's call, Chan called the desk and was informed nobody had asked for him. Weighing the unpredictability of young women in general and Ah-Nah in particular, he got out of his clothes, donned unbleached raw silk pajamas and went to bed.

VIII

CHAN WAS sitting on the edge of the bed, pondering the events of the evening before, when Pat Jarvis called him from the Hollywood Police Station on Wilcox Avenue, just below Sunset.

Following a brief exchange of greetings, the captain said, "Charlie, I had the department Oriental expert up at Mei T'ang's place early this morning. He rates those weird stone vegetables at less than a grand."

Chan scratched his chest beneath his pajamas, glanced at his wristwatch on the bedside table, said, "Still early, Pat. So it's just junk then."

"Worth the metal and alabaster, plus some curiosity value as murder relics," said Jarvis.

Chan said, "The fly I found by the body was not junk. Again I suggest a substitution. Otherwise, why the attack on me and theft of the jeweled fly?"

"Charlie, I know, I know - but I've got to go along with the estimate."

"Then how do you account for the real one?"

"I don't," said Jarvis. "But we've got a murderer to find - and fast - before this case is blown up out of all proportion."

"Ah," said Chan. "I remember the botch of the early-Twenties murder of William Desmond Taylor. You don't want to repeat that one, right?"

"Damned right," said Jarvis.

"What can I do to help?"

"Right now, Just keep digging. We need all the A-one help we can get. And you're just the man who can help me now!"

Chan said, quickly before Jarvis could hang up. "The girl called me at Claudia Haynes's last night - the companion. She made an appointment to see me here at the hotel, but didn't keep it. I've been worried."

"Forget that one, too," said Captain Jarvis. "We had her back here till past two o'clock, then drove her home."

"Much relieved," said Chan. He hung up.

However, he was far from relieved by Jarvis's call. As he showered, then shaved with the electric razor his oldest grandchild had given him for Christmas, he compared the case in its present condition to a plate full of soft noodles - loose ends in every direction.

There was one such end that he could investigate - the matter of the jeweled animals, insects and vegetables in the apothecaries' jars that the police expert had summarily pronounced to be junk. However, he had seen, held and briefly possessed the exquisitely crafted jeweled fly whose near-worthless replica adorned the carved ginseng root.

Chan knew it was not junk.

He ordered a Continental breakfast sent up. The hour was barely past nine - too early to call the party he had in mind. Following the light meal, he arranged with the hotel desk for the rental of a Chevrolet. Only then did he call Hei Wei Chinn, one of the authorities on antique Chinese artifacts he had flown to Los Angeles to see in connection with a viewing of the archaeological exhibit from the People's Republic.

"I await your visit with impatience," said Hei Wei Chinn. He and Chan had been friends since the bygone time when the Oriental art dealer operated a small shop in Honolulu. "When can I expect you?"

"Directly - if my visit at this time will not cause you inconvenience."

"Oh, come on over, Charlie," said the dealer. "Hell, I'm dying to see you after so many years."

Hei Wei Chinn, like his modest shop on South Robertson Boulevard, just below Pico, looked well used. His lean frame was flattered by a finely tailored suit of Hong Kong silk, his shoes were obviously bench made, his tie an objet d'art of vivid and wondrous resplendence.

Taking Chan back to his office, he produced, via a brisk Chinese girl assistant, a rare gunpowder tea in cups so thin as to be almost transparent, and there they chatted of former times and present problems.

When the conversation had been steered to the latter subject, Chan told his old friend about the murder.

"I heard about it on the TV news this morning," said Hei Wei Chinn. "A tragedy. I had no idea you were involved, however, Charlie."

"Yes and no," said Chan. "But there is one point, perhaps a trivial one, on which perhaps you can enlighten me out of your great wisdom."

He went on to describe the murdered star's strange collection and the jeweled insect he had found - and lost. He also gave the report of the police expert, concluding with, "Chine, did you ever hear of such a collection of curios in your study of Chinese works of art? For the fly I picked up was definitely a work of art."

"How did it feel?" Hei Wei Chinn asked.

Chan understood the question perfectly. Without hesitation, he replied, "It felt old - perhaps centuries old - which the ginseng root I handled did not."

Both men knew well the value of the sense of touch in estimating the age of such objects, both were sensitive to the invisible patina of antiquity in the texture of all objects. While hardly as unerring in such estimates as his expert friend, more than once the veteran detective inspector had been able to assign an object to its proper century deep in the past.

Chinn looked thoughtful and fell silent for a pause of at least thirty seconds. Then he said, "It is just possible - maybe..."

He picked up the phone and asked the girl to get him a number in Beverly Hills. After long preliminaries, the conversation was conducted in a North China dialect of which the Honolulu-born detective grasped only a few words. When Chinn hung up, he regarded his visitor with the trace of a complacent smile upon his lips.

[le said, "That was the deputy mission chief of the cultural mission from the People's Republic now in Los Angeles."

"Yes?" said Chan following a three-beat pause.

"I asked him if he had ever heard of such a collection of jewels. He denied it. Then I told him you still had the jeweled fly and that I had examined it and pronounced it a genuine antique masterpiece."

"Go on," said Chan after another pause. "What was his reply?" He looked at the dealer

"He made me hold while he consulted somebody else. I detected a faint tone of excitement in his voice. When he came back, I asked him if he wished to examine it. He said, 'No need. It is imitation.' How do you like that?"

"I think Honorable Hei Wei Chinn should be detective instead of humble self," said Chan.

"In the importing of cultural antiques, the dealer grows used to criminals," said Chinn. "Forgers, smugglers, thieves, fences, even murderers - all in a day's work. What do you make of it?"

"Just what you do, my friend," said Chan.

The deputy mission chief had first denied knowing of a collection like that in Mei T'ang's apothecary jars. Then he had insisted that Chan's phantom fly was a fake. The implications were obvious - someone, almost certainly whoever had stolen the originals and replaced them with cheap facsimiles - had already made or was making a deal with the Communist mission. Their experts must at least have examined the goods and found every insect in place.

Chan said, "If you learn anything further about the collection, I hope you will let me know. I suspect a close connection between the thief and the murderer of Mei T'ang."

"Don't worry - I'll dig till it hurts," promised the dealer. "Who knows? Perhaps this fabulous collection of priceless articles may pass through my hands"

"Keep eye on dollar - old age tranquil," said Chan.

"Oh, cut it out, Charlie," said his friend. "I'm not that old yet. And there's more than a possible buck involved here. My curiosity is aroused."

"Don't let it sleep until it has led you to the truth," said Chan.

Shortly afterward, the visit was concluded and Chan drove the small rental Chevrolet slowly back toward the House of Wu. He remained curious about Ah-Nah, the dead lady's companion, wishing enlightenment as to why she had sought the midnight appointment and why she had not sought him out later in the hotel, when the police were through questioning her.

There was also the matter of discovering the craftsmen who had made the bogus jewels. It was quite possible that the girl, if she were in any way implicated in the robbery, might have some information on the subject. Nor did he rule out the possibility of Ah-Nah being the actual thief herself, though he doubted that the girl, alone, would have the resources to arrange a i secret sale to the Chinese Peoples' Republic.

There were a pair of L.A.P.D. cars parked outside the apartment house, each with a single uniformed officer idling at the wheel, presumably to watch those who entered and left the building as well as to monitor possible calls from Headquarters. Chan found

space halfway down Sycamore Drive and walked back.

Alone in the downstairs hallway, he paused, recalling in detail what had occurred on his first entry less than twenty-four hours earlier. He had entered with Doc Svorenssen, found the Heinemanns waiting for the rickety elevator to make its precarious way from the top floor The oddly matched producer and his strident hennaed wife had tired of waiting and taken the stairs - at any rate, Mrs. Heinemann had and her husband had tagged dutifully along.

The car arrived, Chan and Svorenssen had ridden upward - to be halted at the second floor by Claudia Haynes and Gil Roberts, who had accompanied them the rest of the precarious way to the murdered woman's rooftop conservatory. Chan remembered vividly the unmistakable aura of bristling hostility between actor and agent, hostility barely held under wraps due to the presence of the other two in the car.

This time, Chan's solitary ride to the penthouse apartment was uninterrupted by anything save the protests of the senile machinery of the elevator protests that again made him wish he had taken the stairs. He was met at the top by a uniformed policeman and policewoman, the latter looking trim and remarkable smart in her blues.

Ah-Nah, he learned, had departed at six-fifteen that morning. Yes, she had been alone. Yes, there had been a telephone call. It had come from a public phone booth near Hollywood and Vine. Yes' she had been driven away in a waiting car. No, she had not been followed. There had been only one police car on duty downstairs and there were no orders for either detainment or pursuit of the young woman. So they had let her go.

Chan knew better than to register vocally the frustration that he felt. It was, all too often, the story of his own life - his professional life at any rate. No matter how efficient the bureaucratic organization, there were inevitably unplanned-for contingencies, usually at some key point in the course of an investigation. It was too bad one arose so early.

He desired to examine again the collection of bogus jeweled objects in the dead woman's "laboratory", was informed that, after dusting for fingerprints, they had already been conveyed to the far better equipped facilities of the department's top Oriental expert.

Had there been any subsequent word on the young woman's whereabouts? There had been none. Strike out on two fronts, Chan thought unhappily.

He decided to take the stairs down and not the elevator.

IX

AT THE second floor, Charlie Chan paused. The door to Claudia Haynes' apartment was ajar and, through it, he could hear voices in angry argument - one masculine, one feminine - the voices of Gil Roberts and the agent. He waited where he was, seeking to make out words, but both parties were talking simultaneously and all he could pick up, apart from obscenities, was the anger underlying the words.

As Chan moved along the worn carpet along the hallway between the staircases, the tall actor stormed out, his habitual languor destroyed by his very evident rage. He swung back toward the door and said, "Without me, there'll be no package, you double-crossing whore, and you know it. I'm in whether you like it or not."

He swung back, saw Chan standing there, said without a trace of embarrassment, "Maybe you can talk some sense into the washed-up old bag!"

Roberts' long legs devoured the down staircase three steps at a time. Chan had no trouble imagining that he could see steam arising from the actor's invisible footprints on the well worn carpet He turned back. Claudia Haynes, looking ravaged-chic in cream-collared Cossack blouse and light blue pants, stood in the doorway, squinting at him through the smoke from a cigarette in a long ivory holder.

She said, "You wish to see me, Inspector? Come right on in. This appears to be visiting day."

There was no residue of anger in her manner as she led him crisply inside, sat him down in a leather chair opposite her script and phone-laden desk and offered Chan a drink, which he refused. One of the three phones rang and she picked up the right one unerringly, delivered what sounded like a knowledgeable assessment of some young actress for a specific part.

While she chatted, Chan wondered if Gil Roberts shed his fury as easily as she appeared to. When she hung up, apologized, put her phones on the answer service, he asked her.

"Oh," she said, "Gil will sulk for a couple of hours - until something else turns up to occupy the monorail that passes for his mind. As for me, I blow my top at least a dozen times a day - it's expected of me in this business. If I really let myself get worked up, I'd have been buried years ago." A pause, then, "Now! What was it you wanted to see me about?"

By this time, the veteran detective inspector had his questions ready. He said, "I was wondering what effect the murder of your star will have on the package deal that was mentioned last night?"

She turned over her bony free hand atop the desk in another incisive gesture, said, "Catastrophic - unless I can turn it to our advantage."

"How do you propose to do that?"

"I'm not proposing to - I'm doing it," she said and he noted a rigid, near-bulldog set to her jawline. "I had no wish to see Mei T'ang killed - she was my best client and one of my best friends in bygone years, and she was helping finance her proposed comeback. But what's done is done and life must go on. So do income taxes."

"Alas, true!" Chan punctuated her pause.

"Let's call a spade a spade, shall we, Inspector? There is going to be a tremendous burst of scandal over the killing. Every old lover in Mei T'ang's life - and there were a number of them, I can assure you - will be hauled out of the media morgues, dusted off and dragged into the spotlight. Her old pictures will be pulled out of film storage warehouses and reshown at specialty theaters and on television late shows. Until her murderer is caught, Mei T'ang will once again be big news... and when her murderer is brought to trial, she'll be even bigger news.

"Now my job, as I see it, is to put this film together and get it booked and shot before the second wave comes. If we do that, we ride the crest right up onto the Moneysville shoreline. I've been at it, hot and heavy, since six this morning, calling New York, then calling Chicago and so on, working right across the country with the time zones. And it's going to work. If you had come in half an hour earlier, I couldn't have taken time to see you."

"I understand," said Chan, wondering at this woman's chilled steel opportunism, "and I congratulate you." Then, "I see you work alone. You have no secretary?"

"Not in years, except for special rush jobs - and then I hire a Kelly Girl. With all the automatic aides industry has supplied in recent years, I'm saved the bother of breaking in a new girl and losing her to a studio or to some stud with king-sized equipment every six months. If the correspondence is too much for me, I tape it and ship it out to a professional typists' bureau less than six blocks away on Sunset.

"Believe me, it's easier - and cheaper in the long run. And there are no personality rubs." Claudia discarded her cigarette and placed her folded hands on the desk, added, "Now! Anything else?"

"One further question occurs - how are you going to make the film with the star dead?"

"That," she said with a lip-curl of triumph, "is my secret. Sorry, but it has nothing to do with the crime or who committed it, Inspector."

"One more thing - was Mr. Gil Roberts one of Mei T'ang's many lovers?"

Claudia opened her hands with a what-else gesture, said, "Oh, Gil had his turn in the royal sack." There was a who-didn't? tone in her voice.

Chan said, "I'd like to talk to him. Could you give me his address?"

"Of course." She scribbled with a bright green ball-point on a sheet of initialed notepaper, added as she thrust it across the desk at him, "If you're thinking of seeing him now, I wouldn't. He lives way up in Laurel Canyon and he won't be home till after five. He has a whole slew of appointments."

"Thank you, Miss Haynes." He was dismissed, so he rose and left. Returning to the hotel, he found a half dozen messages from Eric Svorenssen, asking him to call the dentist's office the instant he came in.

Chan called the number Claudia had given him, was informed by the answering service Gil Roberts used that he would not be taking calls until late that afternoon He then called Svorenssen, and was invited to enjoy luncheon at a Chinese restaurant the dentist had found on Pico Boulevard, close to Doheny Drive.

Regretfully, Chan declined, for he knew his friend's unerring instinct for ferreting out superfine restaurants in unlikely neighborhoods. But he knew, also, that the afternoon would be consumed with the doubtless irresistible food, and there was something he wished to do before five o'clock - namely, to pay a visit to Gil Roberts' hilltop eerie whether the actor was at home or not.

So he contented himself with eating lunch alone in the hotel grill, where the cooking, while of good quality, was lacking in the subtle and exotic flavors that represented his ancestral homeland to the Honolulu born Sino-American. While he ate, he considered the possibilities of the tall actor being the murderer of his former mistress always granting the truth of Claudia's statement that he had been one of Mei T'ang's lovers.

('hen knew something of Roberts' career, first as a performer of suave villains in the A-movies of two decades ago, later as a star in the superior classic horror films that had emerged from the declining Hollywood studios during the Sixties. Recently, as the fad waned, Roberts' public appearances had been confined to television guest shots and panel shows, on which he had served as at best a semi-regular.

Just how the murder of Mei T'ang would affect Roberts' career, Chan had no idea. He had not brought up the subject with Claudia, having no desire to indicate to that astute female intellect the direction his thoughts were taking. Nor had she given any indication of considering Roberts as a suspect.

Chan doubted that she would have revealed such suspicions, if they existed - not, at least, if she felt revelation might in any way impair the precious package deal she was so energetically attempting to paste back together. He had long since learned that the female, under certain conditions, is far more ruthless than the male.

Roberts could have killed Mei T'ang. Certainly, he had the strength. Had he had the opportunity? Familiar with the House of Wu as he was, he undoubtedly knew and almost certainly had used, the service elevator. The question of motive remained. If he were the treasure thief, if he had been caught and accused by his former mistress, it would do. Even if he were not the thief, if Mei T'ang had decided to dismiss him from her comeback film, the motive for murder might be sufficient.

In any event, Chan felt a desire to talk to the actor on his home ground, at least to look over the ground for himself. His lunch completed and signed for, the detective recovered his Chevvy from the parking garage in the hotel basement and set out for the address Claudia had given him.

To Chan, unaccustomed to the lane-narrow vagaries of driving through the corkscrew maze of the Hollywood Hills, the trip was reminiscent of both the elevator in the House of Wu and his too-well-remembered ride down and up the Grand Canyon gorge on muleback. He lost his way twice as the rented car slowly scaled the heights, and when he finally found the proper street, he was little better off.

It was barely wide enough for a single car, rose at an alarmingly steep angle to curve out of view from below around a gorge-grown shoulder cut out to resemble the abutment of a miniature gorge. Had it not been for the mailbox at the foot of the driveway, bearing the name Roberts, Chan might not have found it at all.

Nor, when he reached the turnaround at driveway's end was he much better off. The canted roof of a house was barely visible over the brow of the hilltop, beyond which the San Gabriel Mountains, on the far side of the San Fernando Valley, were wreathed in smog of a mustard-gas yellow. To his left, with doors yawning emptily, was a frame two-car garage, filled with the sort of automotive debris that inevitably accumulates in such accommodations.

Chan got out, discovered a steep path that led over the apparent edge of the world between garage and house roof. Negotiating it gingerly, he found himself standing on a small entry in front of a chalet-type residence. The front door was locked and his ringing of the doorbell went unanswered.

Thanks to the building's cantilevered construction, sticking right out of the hillside's north face, there was not even opportunity to walk around it and see what he could see. Nor was there any apparent means of entry, barring the crashing of the door, which was iron-braced and seemed of solid construction.

So it was back up the steep path to reclaim his car and drive back down the twisting hillside road. He paused to look at the open garage, which held nothing more interesting than an old life saver bearing the legend Lucille II and a pair of surfboards marked His and Hers.

Feeling somewhat foolish at having thus wasted his time and missed an excellent lunch with his dentist friend, Chan rolled the rented car down the hill. So sharp was the turn that he did not see the other car blocking his path just around the bend until he was barely able to brake in time to avoid a collision. Thus preoccupied, he was unable to avoid, or even to see in time, the assailant who moved swiftly upon him from the side, grabbed him by the throat with a cruelly knowledgeable stranglehold and pulled him out of the car.

Chan's head struck the top of the front window with a blazing bump, causing him to black out.

X

WHEN CHAN recovered his senses, he was lying comfortably on a daybed covered with a bright Navajo blanket next to a picture window that offered, beyond a narrow porch, a breath-taking panorama of the smog-wreathed San Fernando Valley. His head throbbed from the bump on his forehead and his throat felt as it had not felt since the memorable occasion in his youth when he had worn a stiff old-fashioned evening collar three sizes too small to a formal police banquet in Honolulu.

Turning his head painfully away from the window, he saw the elegant form of Gil Roberts regarding him from a near-by lounge chair. The actor was wearing slacks and a pale blue turtleneck pullover and a sardonic expression. A cigarette smoldered in his long fingered left hand.

Seeing that Chan's eyes were open, the actor said, "We were expecting visitors, but we had no idea it would be you, Inspector. Are you all right?"

"Apart from an abominable headache and a sore neck, I believe I'll survive."

"Annie!" called Roberts. "Will you bring our visitor two aspirins and the good brandy."

The girl appeared, looking clean scrubbed and very much like a Los Angeles high school undergraduate of Chinese ancestry - pretty, healthy, young. As Roberts poured a generous portion of fine, virtually unobtainable old London Dock brandy into a broad beamed Old Fashioned glass, he said, "Best cure for a sore throat in the world."

Chan accepted the medication gratefully, chasing the aspirins with the liquid velvet of the strong liquor. Only then did he ask one of the questions that had been troubling him since regaining consciousness.

He said, "Thankful for rescue. You see attacker?"

"There were two of them," said the actor. "I was on the garage roof. Unfortunately Annie had orders not to answer the door or it wouldn't have happened. When I yelled at them and jumped from the roof, the man holding you dropped you and ran to his car. The other was driving and backed away fast."

Chan said, "Did you recognize either of them?"

"The only one I saw was your attacker. I didn't see his face. The other stayed in the car."

"The driver could have been a woman?"

Roberts shrugged, sipped the brandy he had poured for himself, said, "It could have been. Even from my observation post, the view around the driveway curve was blocked beyond a certain point. You can check it out for yourself."

"No need," said Chan, who had mentally photographed the immediate exterior of the Roberts eerie. "You were expecting visitors?"

"A number of people were looking for Annie," said the actor. "I wanted her here where I knew she'd be relatively safe." "Safe from whom, and what?" said Chan, regarding the girl thoughtfully.

"From whoever killed her mother yesterday," said Roberts quietly.

Chan nodded. His head still hurt but his mind and his senses were functioning. Although there were great surface differences between this scrubbed looking Sino-American schoolgirl type and the exotic companion of the slain film star, he had almost instantly recognized that the same girl was playing both roles.

He said, "I wondered about the Ah-Nah, since it means virtually no name at all in Chinese." Then, to the girl directly, "You wished to see me last night. I have worried about you."

She said, "The police asked so many questions. It got so late I feared I would wake you, Inspector."

"Why did you wish to see me?"

"I was confused. I felt I needed wise advice."

"I feel complimented," said Chan with a nod that briefly brought back his headache. Must not nod, he thought, till head is better. Then, "You are confused no longer?" he asked her.

"I feel much more sure about things," the girl said simply, looking at the actor with a glow of soft adoration.

Chan said, "Sometimes a young woman needs a father even more than she needs a mother."

Roberts opened his hands, said, "So you guessed. Oh, well, I was going to tell you anyway since you're here."

Chan said, "Certain unmistakable bone structure similarities. Also, an ambiance of affection, not of lust." Then, again to the girl, "How long have you known?"

"Only since I called her early this morning and told her some long concealed truths," said the actor. "Annie's position was - well, peculiar. At the time her mother and I were lovers, we were both big stars - and in those days the Breen office rode hard herd on Hollywood where scandal was concerned. Remember what happened to Ingrid Bergman?"

Chan nodded. Then he said, "You are Mei T'ang's heir - heiress?"

"Her only one," said Roberts, "apart from a few small bequests."

"How long were you with her as companion?" Chan inquired..

"Only the last four years. Mother kept me in boarding schools and camp until I was eighteen."

Chan said, "Why are you in danger rather, what reason do you have to believe you are in danger?"

The girl said, "The same reason mother was in danger, and she was killed."

Chan said "The stolen treasure in the apothecary jars?"

The girl nodded. "It was very, very valuable. My mother was offered the chance to collect them only because she had a friend very high in the Nationalist government who was forced to flee to America in 1949. They were part of a very old, entirely unique Imperial palace treasure. Her friend needed money, mother needed a tangible investment."

Roberts said, "Poor Annie thought I was the thief. She also suspected me of murdering her mother."

The girl said, "The last thing she did was show me a jeweled fly she had found in the lab. Then we checked on the collection and found the originals were all stolen. Then she told me it was time she confronted the thief. She sent me to take care of the guests and to send you in to see her when you arrived."

Chan nodded, said, "Why did you suspect your father?"

The girl said, "I didn't know he was my father then. I knew he and- mother were not friendly and that he had access to the treasure and knew what it was. I knew his career was not going well."

"How did you convince her you were not the thief?" said Chan to the actor.

"The thefts must have been going on for some time," said Roberts, refilling his tumbler with brandy. "My bank account had been dwindling steadily save for occasional deposits when I was paid for a TV job or picked up a residual check for reruns of old movies. There would have been some indication of unexplained periods of prosperity had I been the thief. I'm simply not a man who can hide the fact he has money. I enjoy spending it too much."

"That is true," said Annie. "Remember, I have known him a long time now. And I heard mother talk about him."

Chan hid a smile at the girl's proud naivete. Yet he believed Gil Roberts. This man was not one to conduct a prolonged felony. To the girl, he said, "Why did it take your mother so long to discover the thefts?"

The girl said, "She seldom examined them. Her eyesight was very bad. She refused to get glasses until very recently."

"Ah..." said the detective. "And how did your father convince you he was not the murderer?"

"He reminded me that he saw me on the ground floor when the murder must have been committed. Just after mother dismissed me, I had to help one of the guests get parked outside."

"I was on my way in to pick up Claudia," said the actor. "We said hello in passing. It will hold."

"Perhaps," said Chan. "I hope so." His head was clearing under the double impact of the brandy and the aspirins. It would hurt for a day or so - but he had endured worse. As for his throat, the discomfort was entirely external, thanks to his fortuitous rescue. Chan did not feel proud of himself at that moment. Twice he had been surprised by an unexpected assailant. Twice he had been easily taken.

The first time, he had lost the jeweled fly. The second time, he had lost consciousness, might well have lost his life. He pondered the purpose of his unseen assailant. He questioned Roberts further about the man he had seen, but the actor could not or would not give further details.

He said, "In the first place, Inspector, I was too busy trying to save your life to pay attention to details. In the second place, the view to the south is all screwed up."

Chan let it go. He said, to both of them, "Did anyone else see you greet one another at the time of the murder, when you met downstairs?"

They looked at one another thoughtfully. After a moment, the girl said, "There were Mr. and Mrs. Hillburn, I think. Remember?"

"Lloyd and Jeannie!" said the actor, looking relieved. "Of course they said hello as they went in."

"There were others around," the girl added. "But I don't remember them for sure. Do you, Gil?" she asked, looking at her father.

Roberts shrugged wearily, said, "It was a large party."

Chan filed the names in his memory. Pat Jarvis could check it out more easily than he could. Personally, Chan felt quite certain the alibi would stand up. The question remained - whether it was a true one or had been arranged after the event. That, Jarvis could check out' too. There was another question he considered asking his benefactors, but he decided to hold it until the father-daughter story was found to hold water - or not.

Instead, he asked the girl about the jeweled fly How, he said, had it happened to fall off?

Annie said promptly, "I have considered that. I believe the diameter of the neck of the jar and the shape of the jade ginseng root, plus perhaps the thief's hurry, caused it to be knocked loose."

Smart girl, Chan thought. He said, "How firmly was it fastened to the root?"

"Like all the insects on the genuine jewels, it was not glued or nailed. There were tiny prongs on the tips of the legs that fitted into matching holes and slots in the jade." She paused, looking at Roberts.

Chan nodded. This was entirely in keeping with the period and craftsmanship of the creation of the unique treasure. The superb artisans who did the actual carving would have scorned rivets or staples as unlike nature.

To Roberts, he said, "Miss Haynes - you are old friends?"

The actor nodded, made a wry grimace, said, "Old - si. Friends - not exactly. Claudia was my agent when I got started in Hollywood, as she is now. She was Mei T'ang's agent, too. That's how we met."

Roberts paused, sighed, added, "Claudia and I were an item until I fell in love with your mother, Annie. I probably would have married Claudia if she'd let me. But Claudia was all business and felt it might hurt my career - and her commission cut of same."

"And after you fell in love with Mei T'ang?" Chan asked.

"The relationship was not so good. In fact, it might be said to have curdled. Claudia is a very possessive woman."

"Yet she remained your agent?"

"Not by choice," said the actor. "She had me lashed to an iron-bound contract. As I just said, she's a very possessive woman."

"Perhaps you can clarify one thing that puzzles me," said Chan.

"If I can," the actor replied.

"Just how is Miss Haynes proposing to put her package deal together now that her Bette Davis - Joan Crawford is gone?"

From the look the girl and the actor exchanged, Chan sensed that he had touched a vital spot. There was a long, uncomfortable silence before Roberts replied.

Then he said, "Claudia wants to exploit the publicity over the murder to put Annie in her mother's role."

Chan blinked. Again he was surprised, not this time by a criminal action but by the utter cold-bloodedness of the agent's proposal. He said, "Isn't Annie a little young?"

The actor said, "That's the core of the idea - to have Annie playing her own mother playing a part old enough to be her grandmother. Claudia considers it a masterstroke. Remember, she thinks almost entirely in terms of exploitation."

"You think it might work?"

"It could," said Roberts. "But it would hardly be a sound basis for launching Annie on a screen career. Such stunts seldom are."

Chan turned to the girl. "How do you feel about it?"

She hesitated, said, "I don't really know. Everything is happening so fast."

"Can she act?" Chan asked the actor.

Roberts said, "Well enough. She's had training and has enough inherited talent. Given good direction..."

He let it hang. Nor did he, the detective noticed, cite which parent she might have inherited her talent from. Chan suppressed a smile at such tacit if typical actor-egotism, said, "How about the director, and the others involved? How do they feel?"

Roberts said, "It's too soon to tell. Kettering, the director, will probably go along, if I know him - and I do."

"And the producer Mr. Heinemann?"

"So far, an unknown quantity," Roberts told him. "But he's an unemployed producer, so he'll probably fall in line by the time Claudia puts pressure on him."

"How about you?" Chan asked Roberts.

"How do I feel about acting with my daughter?" Roberts replied. "How would any actor feel? I'm delighted."

"Then the relationship would be acknowledged?"

"Certainly. One thing about Claudia - she keeps abreast of the times. The poor thing has to, otherwise she's practically breastless. Oops - sorry! That was in bad taste. But she feels that things sexual in Hollywood have come a long way since poor Ingrid's time of troubles. Therefore..."

Roberts might have run on forever, had not Chan politely asked permission to use the phone. He called Jarvis, told him where he was and of the attack on his person. Jarvis swore mightily and promised to arrange a police guard of the driveway. Otherwise, he had little to reveal of the progress of the case save that the routine investigation was progressing.

Chan had heard this too often not to know its hidden meaning - that nothing was progressing satisfactorily. He hung up, called the hotel, was informed Hei Wei Chinn had left three messages requesting the detective inspector to call him back.

XI

CHARLIE CHAN decided to make that one from the hotel and took his leave with appropriate expressions of thanks. As he worked his way down the twisting hill roads, this time without interference, it occurred to him that his most recent experience had been most curious on several counts, including the lack of description of his attacker and the spate of apparently honest information that threatened to leave him in greater confusion than ever. Damn it, he thought, he liked both father and daughter. If, indeed, they were father and daughter. But he felt quite certain important elements of the truth had been skillfully evaded or disguised.

In short, he didn't wholly believe either of them - nor had he the means of sifting truth from falsehood until he could move from a firmer foundation of fact.

Hei Wei Chinn picked him up at the hotel at seven in his cream colored Continental. Through a smog free twilight, he headed west toward Santa Monica. The evening was pleasantly warm, as Southern California evenings are supposed to be and so seldom are, and the parking lot of the restaurant was washed by a cool breeze from the ocean.

The restaurant was ornate, a concrete and tile pagoda, and the food was more ornate still. The meal the antique dealer had ordered in advance consisted of a mere nine courses and came close to Chan's flavor-memories of true Mandarin cuisine.

The two chief dishes among a welter of delicate lesser platters were a whole haddock baked to flaky firmness and drenched in a sauce of soy base enriched with diced fruits, both fresh and candied, in zestful combination. And a pair of small Pekin ducks, one cooked in rich sauces with a stuffing of fresh green pine needles, the other roasted slowly with only a small cup of rare brandy inside so that the fumes of the liquor would permeate the bird from its core outward.

Not until the last of the preserved fruits that concluded the magnificent repast was consumed did Chan's host refer to the purpose of their trip - beyond that of the dinner they had just concluded. Leaning back against his side of the booth, he looked at his Bulova wristwatch and said, "We have an appointment with Hiu Sai at ten."

"Business - or pleasure?" said the detective inspector.

"My pleasure - your business," said Hei Wei Chinn. "Hiu Sai is a very special custom craftsman. I believe he can be of help to us in the matter of the imitations. When I reminded him of certain highly suspect objets d'art that have been sold as originals in the last few years, he consented to see us."

Chan said, "My friend, if you are taking me to the man who made the substitute treasures of Mei T'ang, it is eighteen minutes to ten right now."

"Hiu Sai lives close at hand," said Hei Wei, signaling for the check.

As they got back into the car, he said, "You shouldn't have hurried us. Good food lies more easily on a restful stomach. Besides, I hate to be early."

"Sometimes wise man ape early bird to good advantage - get worm," said Chan, his face perfectly straight.

"Shut up, Charlie," said Hei Wei, putting the cream colored car into drive.

Hiu Sai's modest abode on a shadowy street close to the borderline between Santa Monica and Venice was dark, lit only by an isolated street lamp of low wattage halfway down the block, which shed only enough light to identify the name and number on the battered aluminum mailbox in front.

"That's funny," said Hei Wei as he pulled smoothly to a stop. "He promised to be here."

Chan got out of the car in silence. His eyes followed the twin tracks of concrete that led to the garage door at the left of the two story frame Louse. The door had been raised and the garage yawned an empty rectangle of darkness.

"I don't like this, Charlie," said Hei Wei, standing at his elbow.

Chan studied the front of the house. It certainly seemed empty. He lifted his eyes toward the second story, seeking an open window. All were closed and though the night was warm, there was smoke issuing from a stout brick chimney at the right end of the roof.

He sighed, said, "I have the feeling I'm about to risk a judicial investigation for the violation of Hiu Sai's rights of property."

Motioning Hei Wei to remain where he was, Charlie Chan climbed the three steps to the small front porch carefully, stepping atop the riser to avoid creaks. Gently, he tried the door, found it locked. He peered in the two front windows but, though the blinds were not drawn, could see nothing since the interior lights were out.

Leaving the porch, Chan walked around the house to the back door, which opened readily when he turned the knob. He stepped inside, closed his eyes and counted slowly to twenty, to permit them to adjust to the greater darkness. When he opened them, he could discern dimly that he stood in a kitchen. The smell of something burning was noticeable, but the heat was not in the stove, which was unlit.

The lights went on suddenly. Hei Wei had entered behind him, found the switch, turned it on. Ignoring his friend, Chan continued to sniff silently. There was an acrid odor to the unseen fire that suggested to him only one thing - film recently incinerated.

He said, "Where is the other stove?"

Hei Wei looked at his friend in perplexity, then said, "Oh! There's an annealing oven in the workshop in the basement."

It proved, for Chan, an interesting room. He was intrigued not merely by the fact that it was an entirely modern electronic workshop in the anachronistic old frame house - but by the several natures of the articles its owner was in the process of reproducing.

Here were a leather seated wooden chair of medieval times, a wide variety of urns in various stages and hues of lustre, old armor (or new armor made old), terra cotta likenesses of Etruscan warrior heads with their wild looking headgear and eyes even longer and wider and more staring than those of the early Egyptian Dynasties.

More immediately interesting to Chan was an apparent object on which the vanished simulator appeared to be currently in work. Held in a vise on a workbench was a block of what looked like amber in which a pair of mating dragon-flies were eternally caught in the act. Atop the bench was a metallic lamp containing a milk white tube that filled its rectangular face.

Hei Wei said from beside him, "So that's how he does it! Sometimes Hiu Sai's workmanship is crude but his measurements are always correct."

"What is it, Chinn?" the detective asked.

Hei Wei did not answer in words. Instead, he pushed a metal button below the white tube, which instantly came to life as a three-dimensional color reproduction of what purported to be the original of the amorous insects. He stepped back, continuing to look at it admiringly.

"Son of a bitch!" he said. "Look at that! He can make facsimiles without having the object itself for study."

In a corner, they found a filing cabinet partially filled with labeled containers that held other tri-di film capsules. One conspicuous gap in the file was, to Chan, like a cavity in an otherwise perfect set of teeth. He hardly needed information as to what was or had been burned in the annealing oven at the far end of the room to make an educated guess. It was obviously film.

Chan said, "Did you frighten Hiu Sai, Chinn?"

The dealer shrugged, said, "I got the impression over the phone that I annoyed rather than frightened him. He's very secretive about his work, you see."

"I see," said Chan, "and I can see why." He indicated the oven, added, "Is there any chance of saving anything burning in there?"

Chinn snorted. "At two thousand degrees, Fahrenheit? You must be joking."

A small sound from the doorway brought both men up short.

XII

"WHAT THE hell do you think you're doing here?" said a soft Southern voice. "You're under arrest."

A pair of uniformed policemen stood there, Smith & Wesson Magnums very much at the ready. Chan raised his hands with a sigh, saw Hei Wei do likewise.

To the arresting officers, Chan said, "If you will have somebody call Captain Jarvis of the Hollywood Station and tell him you have arrested Charlie Chan..."

He got no further. The patrolman who had checked their search snorted his disbelief, said, "And I'm Dick Tracy. You'd better come with us."

It took time. Jarvis had retired for the night and not until close to twelve did anyone identify Chan to the satisfaction of the Santa Monica precinct. A neighbor of the missing Hiu Sai had seen the break-in and phoned an alarm.

"Next time," said the lieutenant on night duty, "let us know in advance. We'll be glad to cooperate, Inspector."

"In Kingdom of Heaven," said Chan, "cooperation, not competition, law of land."

Back in the antique dealer's big car, Hei Wei said, "Why the fortune cookie motto, Charlie?"

"People expect it of me," said Chan. "Cannot leave laughing, leave smiling." He gave Hei Wei a broad smile.

"Pardon me while I retch," said Hei Wei, turning east on Broadway. "Where to now, Charlie?"

"Home - to hotel. And thanks for a fine dinner and a most instructive evening."

"You call that instructive?" said Hei Wei. "All but getting arrested? What good did it do?"

"It showed us the efficiency of the Santa Monica Police," said Chan. "It also showed us that someone called Hiu Sai to warn him of our impending arrival."

"Now who would do a thing like that?" said Hei Wei. "You give me the creeps."

"Possibly a man named Hei Wei Chinn," said Chan.

"Me - who was tapping my phone?"

"Remember, you called and made the appointment," said Chan. "It is just possible Hiu Sai decided to call his employer on the Mei T'ang treasure substitution and ask for advice."

"Son of a bitch!" said Hei Wei, pounding the wheel with the base of a hand. Then, contrite moments later, "Who did Hiu Sai call?"

"That," said Chan, "is the sixty-five thousand dollar question."

"Don't you mean sixty-four thousand dollar question?" Hei Wei asked.

"Because of its importance, I decided to up the ante," said Charlie Chan.

"I buy you the best Chinese dinner in Los Angeles," lamented Hei Wei, "and you turn me into a straight man!"

"Cholly so solly," said Chan.

Both men began to laugh...

But Chan was not laughing when he reached the Hollywood Roosevelt. His face was as serious as his thoughts when he stepped to a lobby phone and gave the operator Claudia Haynes' number. During the seemingly wasted time of their arrest, his mind had been in overdrive. He had been reweighing the crucial minutes during the Mei T'ang party when the murder must have been committed.

He was quite certain that he and Svorenssen had arrived after the crime - but not by much. He once again used his disciplined near-total recall to run over everything he had seen, heard and smelled before and during that critical period.

Claudia's contralto growl came through, said, "Who is it?"

"Inspector Chan," he replied. "Sorry to wake you."

"You didn't," said the agent. "Who in hell can sleep with Mei T'ang's murderer still loose?"

Wearing a pink quilted house coat, she received Chan. A loaded highball was in one hand, a loaded cigarette holder in the other. She offered him a drink, which he refused, led him to the living room and turned down the sound on the color television, which was running a James Bond type spy spoof.

Flinging her undernourished limbs on the leather sofa, she said, "At your service."

Claudia Haynes, Chan judged, was not drunk but had reached an uninhibited plateau of semi-intoxication. He said, "You remember yesterday afternoon when you and Gil Roberts got in our elevator?"

"I'm not bloody likely to forget!" she replied. A visible shudder shook her thin shoulders.

"How long were you with Roberts before you got into the elevator, Miss Haynes?"

"Not long," she said. "In recent years, I see as little of Gil as possible, apart from professional considerations." Then, with a shrug, "A buck's a buck, as you well know, and while Gil's value as a property is not what it was, ten percent of his earnings is more than I can afford to give Up."

Ignoring the extraneous matter, Chan said, "Do you remember which direction he came from?"

"Not bloody likely! He rang my doorbell just as I was about to leave and go upstairs to Mei T'ang's party.',

"And you had been at home until then?"

The agent revealed her exasperation, said, "While I am fully aware of the importance of repeated questioning in an investigation of this nature, I was not aware that there was no legal proviso against boring the interogatee to death.

"I've been through it with you, I've been through it with the police. Yes, I was at home. No, I have no witnesses to prove it, unless a check of my phone calls will serve that purpose. All I can tell you is what I already have."

"Thank you, Miss Haynes."

"Make that Ms. Inspector. I'm tired of sounding like the Virgin Queen."

"As you wish," replied Chan, thinking that here, indeed, was a fine specimen of a Woman's Lib leader born, perhaps, a decade or two too early. At the moment, Claudia was showing her age via the bags under her eyes and the heavy lines etched around her mouth.

"One thing more," he said, "if you can."

"If I can," she replied.

"I would like the address and phone number of the Heinemanns. I have yet to bore them with my questions."

"Touche," said the agent, rising from the couch with just a hint of a list to starboard.

While she went to her office to write down the information, Chan took the liberty of calling Gil Roberts, and was rewarded with the irritating buzz of a busy signal.

He hung up as Claudia returned bearing a piece of notepaper as well as a newly refilled highball. He said, "May I continue to use the phone, Ms Haynes? Local calls only."

"You may call Timbuktu if you wish," she replied, handing him the paper with the Heinemann information. "My phone bills, as an agent, are astronomical anyway."

Chan dialed the Hollywood Detective Bureau, identified himself, inquired if there was still a patrolman on watch at the hilltop residence of Gil Roberts. Frowning, he hung up, dialed operator and asked for a cut-in on the busy Roberts line to be informed that it was off the hook.

For a long moment, Chan stood lost in thought while Claudia regarded him curiously. Then he dialed the number of the producer and his wife that Claudia had just given him. Rosina Heinemann's ear-piercing shrill uttered a loud Hello in his left ear.

"Inspector Chan," he told her. "I apologize for such a late call but it is most important."

"It's okay," she said. "Harold and I haven't been able to sleep since Mei T'ang was killed. What's on your mind, Inspector?"

He glanced at Claudia, saw that she was watching him and listening, narrow eyed. He said, "I'd like to pay you a visit, please."

"When?"

"Right now, if I may. Believe me, Mrs. Heinemann, but it is most important."

"Well, I don't know," said the producer's wife. "It's awfully late."

"Please forgive my insistence," said Chan. "It's urgent."

She gave in, saying, "Well, since Harold and I are still awake, I guess it's okay. But you'd better hurry. We just took a pill."

"I'll be there directly, and thanks," he said. "Just stay awake till I get there."

He hung up, turned to Claudia, said, "How do I get there?"

She said, "From here, the best route is to take Cahuenga to Berry Drive There's a short cut through the Outpost, but you'll never find it unless you've been there before." She rose again, said, "I'll get you a map."

She brought a road map back with her, spreading it out on the coffee table. Using a ball-point, she traced the intricate convolutions of the hillroads that would take him to the desired address. Chan studied it, memorized its curves, then paused to look at a spot on the chart just south and west of the indicated address.

He said, "I believe I'm confused. Is this where I must go?"

Claudia crowded close to him to look. Her scent a heavy jasmine, was unfamiliar to his nostrils. She redirected the pen to its previous spot, said, "That's not where the Heinemanns live. That's Gil Roberts' house. It may look close but it's about a quarter mile straight up from Harold and Rosy's."

"Sorry," Chan said, masking the excitement that rose within him. "I'd better get going."

"You'll never find it if you can't read the map better than that, Inspector," said Claudia, moving toward the door. "I'll drive you there. I'll be ready in about ten minutes."

She was back in less than five, wearing slacks and a grey sweater with an incongruous pastel mink stole slung over her shoulders. Chan, who had moved away from the telephone, regarded her with respect. He needed only one more piece in the puzzle to lock it up, and that piece could wait until morning.

Claudia said, pulling keys from the gold-mounted clutch-bag she was carrying, "Let's put 'he show on the road, Inspector."

XIII

CLAUDIA HAYNES took off from the underground garage beneath the House of Wu like a skyrocket, spinning her tiny yellow Porsche around curves and up grades with a speed that would have had Chan's insides up in his throat had he not quickly sensed that the agent was one of those rare drivers of either sex whose reflexes match her impulse for speed.

As they shot up the Outpost's corkscrews toward Mulholland Drive, Chan wondered if she were testing his nerve as; a strong willed woman seeking any means of asserting her superiority - or was she pushed by some less obvious, less inner-directed motivation?

It was in part to discover this and other facets of Claudia Haynes that had prompted Chan so readily to accept her offer to be his chauffeur - plus the good and sufficient reason that she would probably get him to his destination much more rapidly than he could hope to do himself.

Chan also wondered if he would have arrived at the solution to the mystery of the strangling of Mei T'ang any more quickly if he had got around to talking to the Heinemanns earlier. Probably not, he decided... and there was still going to be a great deal to seek out and sort out once the strangler was safely under lock and key.

Merely thinking of those viselike fingers made his own throat ache where they had gripped it that afternoon. His brush with death had been closer than he liked to think about. Had the killer not been interrupted...

"Hold onto your hat, Charlie," said Claudia as she half-skidded the sports car over what looked like the rim of eternity. "Here we go again."

They followed a staggering series of ass-curves at what seemed to Chan like a ninety degree drop, so steep that with each swerve of the front wheels he feared the rear of the Porsche would leave the rough pavement to somersault them arse over teakettle down the hill. Then, taking an abrupt left turn, Claudia powered the Porsche up to a briefer series of curves, swung right and skidded to a sudden halt on a well graded turnaround in front of a pair of bolted garage doors.

They were in a hillside recess, the night sky above them virtually shut out by the foliage of overhanging trees. Save for the faint glow of a distant street light - again, Chan thought, recalling the similar dim situation at Hiu Sai's deserted Santa Monica establishment - they were in a virtual enclosure of darkness.

The hillside rose to their left. To their right, barely visible stone steps led to a balustraded terrace that ran the length of a house that seemed embedded in the hill itself. No light shone in any of the windows.

Claudia's finger closed, claw-like, on Chan's right bicep. In a stage whisper, she said, "I don't like it. You just talked to them, didn't you?"

"I talked to Mrs. Heinemann," said the detective inspector, his own voice low.

"Something must have happened," said the agent.

"Maybe nothing has happened," said Chan.

She stared at him in the darkness for a long moment, then whispered. "I can do without riddles, thank you. I'm going to take a look."

"You'd be wiser to wait here," he said, but it was too late. Claudia had already slipped out of the car and was making her way toward the balustrade that led to the front door of the house. From the fact that her footfalls were silent, he judged that she was wearing soft-soled slippers. Was it luck - or forethought? At the moment, Chan was not sure.

Three times already in this case, Chan had been caught with his guard down - once by the unseen assailant who had robbed him of the jeweled fly in Mei T'ang's bathroom, once by the strangler outside of Gil Roberts' hilltop house who had all but killed him, once by the Santa Monica police in Hiu Sai's workroom.

Three times was more than enough. He had no intention of being caught off-guard again...

The crux of the entire case, he was convinced, was the strange treasure of ancient Chinese jewels and jadecraft that had been stolen from the murdered actress' "laboratory" and replaced with shoddy substitutes. Taken from the falling Republic of Nationalist China at the time of the Communist takeover, Mei T'ang had purchased the jewels honestly enough for an as yet unlisted sum of money.

The cultural representatives of the People's Republic currently in Los Angeles were willing to pay a large sum for their recovery and return to the land of their creation, according to his friend Hei Wei Chinn. They had virtually concluded a deal with whoever had managed the slow theft and replacement of the objets d'art.

Mei T'ang's poor eyesight, plus the screen-star vanity that forbade her wearing glasses for so long, had rendered both the theft and the substitution relatively simple for the thief. The murdered star had allowed no one in the treasure room - her "laboratory" so called - save certain trusted individuals, and these only in her own presence. Otherwise, the bizarre chamber was kept under lock and key.

It occurred to Chan, as he quickly reviewed the basis of the case, that the old adage anent the Crusaders' wives' chastity girdles that has come down as, "Love laughs at locksmiths," would be more applicable as "Lust laughs at locksmiths." Lust for loot as well as for romantic fulfillment.

Certainly, someone close to Mei T'ang had arranged access to the treasure chamber during the late star's absence, had had the unique and priceless gems tri-di photographed, returned them and done the substitutions one by one. The slow theft had been scheduled to coincide with the visit of the cultural mission from the People's Republic - or had it been the other way around?

At the moment, Chan considered this immaterial.

It had been Mei T'ang's misfortune to visit the oculist and have herself fitted to glasses just before the deal was complete. Whether the jeweled fly had been knocked or jarred free of its tiny slots on the surface of the jade ginseng root, while being brought back from the photographer, or when its substitution with the imitation ginseng root occurred, was also immaterial at this point.

Newly keen of vision, the erstwhile actress had discovered it on the eve of her reception - and this had led directly to her discovery of how she had been victimized. It had also led directly to her murder, in a form so dramatic that it hinted more at extemporal desperation than at the careful planning that had been a feature of the treasure thefts.

The importance of the jeweled fly to the thief was self-evident. It remained the only concrete evidence that Mei T'ang's treasure, purchased under the counter, had ever actually existed - or that it had remained in her possession right up to the time of her death.

Small wonder the thief, who was also almost certainly the killer, had run the appalling risks attendant upon assailing Chan with the lavender towel in his victim's bathroom. It had been vital that the tiny gem be recovered lest the whole crime be unveiled before the loot was paid for.

The problem assailing Chan was - who could have known he had it? The answer, of course, was - whoever had spied on him via the silent bathroom door. This, all of it, was the corpus delicti, the body of the crime.

Now it was time to bring the party or parties responsible into camp and into court where justice due would be meted out. Apparently it was up to him to see that this was done.

His eyesight now fully attuned to the tree-shaded darkness, Chan followed Claudia's progress as she slithered, a darker exclamation point against the deep shadow of the house itself, along the facade toward the front door. There, she apparently found the door unlocked, for she vanished within the house, seeming to flow through it.

"Interesting," murmured Chan. He remained where he was, waiting for some visible or at least audible reaction to the agent's entry. But there was none.

Chan decided it was time for him to get into the action now that Claudia had committed herself. Moving with the greatest of care to avoid making any noise since, unlike the agent, he was not wearing soft-soled shoes, he avoided the balustrade steps that led to the front door. Instead, he worked his way along the side wall, hoping to find some sort of opening between the garage and the house, with the steep hillside immediately at its back. Chan was quite certain there had to be a rear entry, if only for delivery of groceries to such a sizable house on a hill.

He found it, a wooden lattice gate that led to a path barely a yard wide between the rear wall of the house and the concrete revetment against the hillside to prevent landslides following spring rains. More important, at the end of this apparently blind alley, just short of the other end of the house, he found a concrete stairway leading steeply upward toward the scarp of the hill.

The light was better here than in the tree shaded front of the house. Chan could even see a narrow oblong section of night sky, complete with stars and scudding cotton clouds. He paused, checking his bearings, making sure of a return route should he need one in a hurry. To his right, a ground floor rear window was open. He waited, just short of it, for some sound or other sign of life inside the house. But there was none.

Chan wondered what Claudia Haynes was doing in there and if she was alone. If she was not, she had to be engaged in some sort of stalking game he very definitely wanted no part of.

Not unless he was sure he was the stalker. Chan had been stalked enough in the last thirty-six hours!

With continuing, practiced care against involuntary noisemaking, Chan bent low to slip past the open window and went on to the concrete staircase at the end of the alleyway. When he reached their top, he discovered that less than two feet separated him from the roof of the producer's hillside mansion.

It was almost a flat roof, slanted enough to let rainwater flow off it into drains in the passageway at the rear of the house he had just traversed. About a dozen feet in from either end rose a massive chimney of light brick to a height of eight feet or more.

Chan hesitated. Since there was such easy external access to the roof, he doubted that there would be an internal opening. Hence, if he opted to use it and the cover of its chimneys while awaiting the imminent detonation he expected, he would be cut off from immediate and perhaps vital participation in whatever occurred inside the house.

At that moment, he heard the snap of a branch or large twig somewhere in the impenetrable brush tangle of the hillside above. At least one question was answered for the detective inspector - he had arrived ahead of the expected invaders. He would also be in plain view when the invaders drew nearer.

His decision taken from him, Chan leapt nimbly and silently for the roof and moved quickly to the far side of the nearer of the big brick chimneys.

It took Chan less than a second to discover that he was not alone in his cover, when he felt the muzzle of a revolver shoved into the small of his back and a voice whispered, "Hands at the nape of your neck, you bastard - and shut up!"

This time, although apparently caught offguard, Chan was physically and psychologically prepared for any sort of unexpected attack. He had little time even for the highly specialized disciplines of defense and counterattack without any weapon save his mind, spirit and body, that were a part of his lifelong conditioning.

But so unskilled was the attack that he scarcely needed such disciplines. Instead, falling to his hands and knees, he kicked upward with unerring savage accuracy at the elbow of the arm that held the gun. Its owner let out a hiss of anguish and the hand-weapon, a small automatic, described a slow parabola against the sky. Rising to his knees, Chan caught the weapon before it could clatter to the roof and pushed both his attacker and himself back behind the cover of the chimney and its shadows.

He whispered, "Mr. Heinemann, I hope I didn't hurt you."

"Charlie Chan!" the producer gasped. "What the hell? I sure wasn't expecting you to be here at"

The rest of his speech was abruptly cut off when Chan clapped a hand over his mouth and whispered, nodding toward the steep hillside, "Company coming."

XIV

HAD ANNIE WORN black-face or a dark mask, it is doubtful that either of the men on the roof would have seen her at all. Clad in a dark jumpsuit, she was virtually invisible as she emerged from the nightswept hillside behind her at the top of the revetment and moved silently down the steps to the rear of the house.

There was a low whistle from below them, followed by a soft call, "Hey! It's me - Annie!"

Then came the sound of a door being unlocked and a sudden indirect glow as the lights went on, followed by a trio of voices in words of greeting all of them feminine, all of them as easily recognizable to Chan as they were to his companion.

Claudia's husky contralto said, "How did you manage to leave Gil?"

"Unconscious," said Annie.

"You're sure he's out of the picture?', Claudia asked. "I've known him to make a fast recovery when I thought he was passed out cold."

"A little laudanum can be a girl's best friend," Annie replied. Then, "What about the son of heaven? I thought you told me over the phone you were driving him here."

For the first time, Rosina Heinemann's shrill rasp made itself heard. "Harold's taking care of him."

"But Harold's a pussycat!" cried the girl. "After all, Charlie Chan has a reputation for knowing how to handle himself."

"Harold has his little surprises," said his wife. "He won a raft of combat medals in World War Two."

"Just the same, let's cheek it out," said Annie. "I don't want Chan running for the police at this stage of the game."

"The child's right," said Claudia. "Let's check it out. Where do we look?"

"Harold's on the roof," said Mrs. Heinemann. "We'd have heard some noise if anything had gone wrong. Claudia, why didn't you bring him inside with you?"

"I thought he'd follow," the agent replied. "He started to, but I lost him. Merde!" said Claudia. "Come on. We can't settle anything until we're sure."

The voices faded and there were sounds of movement two stories below. Heinemann looked at the detective inspector, said, "We've got less than fifteen seconds. Do you think you can trust me to make it look good?"

Chan said, "No, but it looks as if I'll have to."

He pulled the clip from the automatic, emptied it, put the bullets in a jacket pocket. Then he unloaded the cylinder, tossed that bullet up onto the hillside and replaced the empty clip before returning it to the producer. By the time the women appeared at the top of the concrete steps, he made a convincing captive with his hands clasped at the back of his neck and Heinemann standing behind him, covering his back with the automatic.

"Nice work, Harold," said Claudia. "Sorry, Chan, but you were making things uncomfortable and we have a lot to do."

"What shall I do with him?" Harold asked.

There was a brief, whispering huddle - then Rosina said. "Put him in the garage and tie him up in one of the cars. Then start the motor running."

They stood aside as Harold pushed him down the concrete steps and watched by the glow of the lights in the house as the producer marched him along the narrow back passage to the trellis gate that led to the garage area of the estate.

Heinemann said, "Open Sesame," in front of the garage door, which rose in response to the sound of his voice to reveal a dark cavern with the rear elevations of a large Cadillac and a Country Squire station wagon.

Chan glanced quickly over his shoulder to see if they were being watched, saw that Annie was standing on the balustraded terrace with the other two women behind her.

"They don't seem to trust one another too well," Chan said as the door closed silently behind them after Heinemann had switched on the garage lights.

"That's putting it mildly," said the producer. He lowered the gun, added, "Sorry to have to play such a performance with you, Charlie Chan. I know all about you, of course."

"That is more than humble self know," intoned the detective inspector.

"At least I've read almost everything that's been printed about you over the years. And your performance in disarming me up there on the roof more than lives up to advance notices."

"Then you're not going to tie me up and leave me to the tender mercies of the soothing carbon monoxide?" Chan asked.

"And let those three furies have your murder hanging over me?" the producer countered, slipping the unloaded automatic into the waistband of his well cut slacks. "Rosy's got enough on me already - never mind what - or I'd never have gone along with this cockamamie scheme in the first place."

"Perhaps trouble with the Internal Revenue?" said Chan.

"Perhaps," said Heinemann. "At any rate, it's bad enough to justify cutting a few corners."

"But not enough to risk a murder rap," said Chan.

"No way," the producer replied.

Heinemann went to the big Cadillac - and got the motor going with the windows rolled halfway down. Then he did the same with the Country Squire.

"Between the two of them," he said, "they should do the job on a bound man in a garage this size. Let me go out first and see if anyone's still watching."

Chan didn't like it. He had a hunch that, once the garage door was closed, it would open only to its master's (or mistress's) voice pattern. But he could shut the motors off so there was no danger of asphyxiation. He simply had no desire le, be trapped.

It was a chance he had to take. So Chan took it. If his relief when the garage door went up again in a few moments failed to show on his inscrutable face, it was none the less real. He got out the instant the producer switched off the garage lights and the two of them made their way silently along the passage behind the house to the open rear window.

Claudia was striding the carpet, smoking a cigarette in her long holder as usual, sounding off to the others. She said, "... interest from now on lies in reviving the picture and exploiting it for every cent we can make. Otherwise, this whole effort is up the spout. I don't think any of us want that, or can afford it. So what I propose is -"

Annie interrupted her to ask Rosina Heinemann, "What about the fellow who made the fakes?"

"He's on his way to Brazil by now. He called le, tell me Chan was coming to see him, so I told him to burn the photos and take off. He's been well paid and he has no desire to be pulled in as accessory to a murder. He's got a record for fraud as long as your arm."

"One thing about a life of crime," said Annie over the rim of a highball. "You do meet such a nice level of people."

"Merde!" said Claudia impatiently. "What I want to see is some money. Without it, we're nowhere. We already spent a small fortune as it is - with no return."

Rosina shrilled, "Harold's meeting the Red China culture guy tomorrow - today, I mean, for the payoff."

"By rights," said Annie, "it's my money. After all, I'm mother's chief legatee."

"Honey," said Claudia hoarsely, "until the murder of your mother is solved, you've got about as much chance of inheriting a piece of toilet paper as you have of cashing in. That's one little trap the law lays for matricides - or any kind of murderer."

"Don't look at me that way," said Annie angrily. "You seem to think I killed mother."

"Didn't you, darling?" The agent's voice cut like a surgeon's scalpel.

There was a moment of thick silence in the room. Somewhere, on the hillside above them a cicada began strumming its jew's harp incessantly, to be joined by a swelling chorus of like-minded members of the species. But their tedious sound was insufficient to drown out the retort of the suddenly furious girl.

"You know perfectly well I didn't strangle Mei T'ang," she cried, "since you did it yourself. I saw you slipping into the elevator in the conservatory as I was greeting the guests."

"I wasn't even inside the apartment proper. I left my cigarette holder in my own pad and went back to get it. That's when Gil Roberts rang my bell and I came back up with him."

"Gil!" cried Rosina Heinemann "1 never thought he had the guts to kill a fly unless the script demanded it."

"He didn't do it," said the girl. "I had to take the next elevator down to take care of somebody's parking problem and met him coming in."

XV

CHARLIE CHAN had increasingly suspected that the alibi Annie and her new-found father had given one another that afternoon, while he was in the girl's house, was a phony. He was quite sure it was the tall actor who had half-strangled him and pulled him from his car unconscious.

After all, the empty garage indicated that Roberts, or the girl, or both of them had been out somewhere while he poked around their hillside place and found it empty. Now he wondered why he had been attacked at all and why, in the circumstances, the attack had not been carried through to a finish.

If, in fact, Gil Roberts was not the murderer, then only one real possibility remained. And here, again, was a hitch. Vividly, Chan remembered the Heinemanns standing in the ground floor hallway of the House of Wu, awaiting the return of the interminable elevator to take them aloft. They had been waiting where they were for some little time, for he had not seen them enter the building as he and Doc Svorenssen came up the walk.

He had not seen them - and he would have remembered Rosina Heinemann's flaming hennaed hairdo had he seen it - because the producer and his wife had not been outside the building. They had come downstairs, probably by the service elevator, and were making their official re-entry as guests at the party.

Only then did it occur to Chan that he was in far greater danger than he had supposed. Evidently Heinemann had not carried out his wife's instructions to put him out of the way for keeps because he hoped one of the women could be neatly framed for the murder he had already committed himself - that of Mei T'ang. But now such a possibility was vanishing in front of his eyes.

On a sound level between the zum-zumming of the cicadas and the voices of the women in the room, Chan heard the low growl of a barely touched police car siren. When he dialed them on the alternate line in Claudia's apartment, while she called Rosina to set up the meeting as she dressed, he had asked them to be on hand at two-thirty. That hour was gone, but not by much according to the phosphorescent dial on his Bulova.

There was something else nagging the periphery of his consciousness faint, all too familiar, scent of some sort of cologne or toilet water, an odor with a lilac base. At first, as they watched and listened at the window, Chan had been reasonably sure that it came from within the room, wafted through the open window by a current of air.

But, some moments before, Harold Heinemann had moved warily around the detective inspector and was standing wide of the window at his left side. Unquestionably, since what breeze there was came from the direction of the producer, he had to be the user of the scent - hence Chan's towel attacker in Mei T'ang's guest bathroom.

As far as Chan was concerned, this put the seal on the case. This and the conversation of the women in the late night talk he had so carefully arranged while making its participants believe they had arranged it themselves.

It was time to make his move - and he made it none too early. Apparently forgetting the gun was unloaded, the producer was in the act of pulling it from his waistband as Chan swung toward him in an explosion of frenetic activity that belied the placidity of his normal movements.

He stamped a heel down hard on Heinemann's left foot, hooked one of his own arms through his opponent's right elbow, jamming his gun hand, and drove his free elbow with rare precision, full into Heinemann's solar plexus, doubling him up without an ounce of air left in his lungs.

He was holding the producer thus, doubled over, when a patrolman came through the lattice-worked gate and along the passage and shone a flashlight on the little tableau.

Chan said, "You can take his gun, officer. It is not loaded."

It was then that Charlie Chan was caught with his guard down for the fourth time since his involvement in the Mei T'ang murder began. As he removed the automatic from Heinemann's nerveless fingers, the officer's forefinger became caught in the guard and accidentally pressed the trigger.

The pistol detonated with a blast all the more startling because it was totally unexpected, causing both Chan and the officer to duck low as the bullet ricocheted angrily from wall to wall between house and revetment, finally to whine away to silence.

* * *

"Okay, Charlie," said Doc Svorenssen, removing the spit inhalator and the cotton wadding from his mouth, "that will do it."

"Mouth dry as camel's tail," said Chan, working his lips and tongue furiously to regain lost feeling. Outside, the view of the Miracle Mile from the dentist's window consisted mostly of smog. His new bridge felt tight, but he knew that would pass.

"Tell me, Charlie," said Svorenssen, untying his white apron behind him, "if you had known Harold Heinemann had reloaded his popgun with a spare clip, would you have been quite so nonchalant about the whole thing?"

Chan took his time answering. Once again, he reviewed the entire case. Heinemann was the murderer, of course, abetted by sweet Rosina of the hideously shrill voice - though which of the two had actually suggested the conspiracy that ended in Mei T'ang's murder would probably never have been known by anyone save the two principals.

The producer's career had been slipping but his life style had not. Hence, his tangle with the Internal Revenue Service and the State of California Franchise Tax Board. If Heinemann did not come up with a six-figure sum by June 1 5th, he was inevitably due to take crippling penalties, perhaps a prison term, for fraudulent returns.

At first, the picture Claudia and Mei T'ang wanted him to produce seemed like manna from heaven. He had had no other offers in two years and needed work - and the pay it would bring - desperately. However, most of his fee was to come out of subsequent profits, and it quickly developed that Mei T'ang's promise to finance the film, at least in part, was not to be fulfilled - and without the star's backing, in this case, no one else could be obtained.

It was out of this background that the conspiracy to steal her priceless collection of one-of-a-kind Chinese antique imperial baubles, replace them with imitations and peddle the originals to the Red Chinese cultural mission was born.

As Chan had suspected, the deal was all but completed when the erstwhile star determined to sacrifice her vanity at long length and be fitted for spectacles. Mei T'ang was motivated by her need to read the proposed script herself, an act that had further steeled her determination to have nothing to do with the film's financing.

Then she had discovered the jeweled fly and summoned Heinemann for a showdown, knowing him to have been the only person who could have had opportunity actually to commit the thefts over so long a period. Result - her own murder.

Mrs. Heinemann, morally at least as guilty as her husband, had summoned the caterers in a well designed move to impede immediate police investigation with confusion. She had used Jason Catering herself many times while entertaining at her hillside house and was well aware of the stand-by system and near-instantaneous response by which the outfit operated so successfully in Hollywood.

This strident lady with hennaed hair was sufficiently involved as an accomplice in the actual crimes to find a prison term awaiting her - not as long as that of her husband but one which would probably use up what remained of her natural life.

Actual ownership of the fabulous treasure whose substitution was the immediate cause of the murder would remain with its purchasers - the Bureau of Culture of the Chinese People's Republic. After all, they had paid for it and, if the deal was tainted, there was heavy pressure from certain high American government circles to prevent any effort intended to halt its return to the land where it was created.

The others involved in the conspiracy, drawn into it by less directly felonious motives, would probably get off more lightly. Gil Roberts, it appeared, was not involved at all - for the fortunate reason none of the other members of the conspiracy had felt able to trust him.

As for his attack on Chan, Roberts had ruefully explained, "Hell, I was afraid it was the murderer after Annie. She told me her life was in danger. When I heard a car start where no car was supposed to be as I was coming back, I blocked the driveway with my heap and yanked you out of yours by the throat. When I saw it was you, I damn near passed out."

A pause, then, "What do you suppose will happen to Annie? I guess in a way it's my fault."

"As I understand it, her mother never gave you the chance," said Chan, thereby lifting the fallen star's spirits immeasurably

According to the Hollywood trade papers which Chan had examined that very afternoon in his dentist's reception room, Roberts alone of the lethal little group had emerged professionally unscathed. According to a page-five news squib, the tall actor had been cast in two television series segments and had the inside track for a second lead in an upcoming feature film.

Chan's thoughts returned to the here and now. Doc Svorenssen, wearing one of his patented ultra-loud sports jackets - this one in a plaid the like of which the Highlands never saw - grinned at Chan amiably, his blue eyes alight.

Putting an arm around his friend's shoulders, the dentist said, "Hey, Charlie, since this is your last night on the mainland, how'd you like to come to a party with me?"

"I'd love to," said Chan, "but I'm taking a six P.M. plane to Honolulu right now. If you'd care to come along, I'll take you to nice party in Honolulu. Chop, chop."

"Okay - but at least let me drive you to the airport," said Svorenssen, an offer that Chan was glad to accept.

En route, Svorenssen said, "Hey you didn't answer my question."

"Which question?"

"Whether you'd have been quite so nonchalant about taking Heinemann if you'd known he'd reloaded his gun?"

"Cholly," said Chan, "assert better part of valor, - take the Fifth..."

THE END