Mason laughed.

  Wenston said with dignity, “I told him to give you a croth-examination.”

  “I expected that,” she said. “The reason I didn’t tell Mr. Wenston all the details is that I don’t want to keep going over them again and again. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Mason, that I know Mr. Wenston isn’t the one who put that ad in the paper. For one thing, it’s very apparent that Mr. Wenston is rather young to have been in partnership with my father in 1920. I also know it because I know something about the persons with whom my father had that partnership. One of them was a man by the name of Karr, and I presume that he’s the one who’s really back of this ad in the paper. I’ve asked Mr. Wenston if that wasn’t a fact, and he refused to answer. I’ve asked him if he isn’t related to a Mr. Karr or employed by him, and he told me we’d go over that when we got to your office. Well, the way I look at it, if Mr. Karr is the one who’s really interested, why can’t we go to see him and then have it settled one way or the other?”

  Wenston shook his head firmly. “I won’t subject the guv’nor to the strain of such an interview unleth I know it’s justified. You’ve got to convince me before you can ever see him.”

  “How much convincing are you going to require?” Miss Wickford asked, her eyes surveying Wenston in a head-to-toe glance, which was something less than cordial.

  “I’m going to need lots of convincing.”

  “All right, here goes,” Miss Wickford said cheerfully, drawing up a chair and unfastening the snap on a large purse which she had carried under her arm.

  “Tell me the name of your father,” Wenston said, glancing at Mason meaningly. “It might save time.”

  Her glance was scornful. “His name was Wickford. He had trouble with creditors, so he went to the Orient. While he was in Shanghai, he took the name of Tucker.”

  Wenston frowningly studied her. “He had rather an unusual firtht name. Perhaps you can tell us what that was.”

  “I can tell you what it was,” she said, “and I can tell you how he happened to take it. The name was D-O-W, and it consists of the initials of my name. Doris Octavia Wickford. Octavia was my mother’s name, and when my father wanted some distinctive first name, he coined the word Dow from those initials.”

  This time Wenston managed to keep his face more of a mask. “What else?” he asked. “Have you any proof?”

  She took a somewhat dog-eared envelope from her purse. The envelope had a Chinese stamp and postmark. She said, “This letter was sent from Shanghai, January 8, 1921.”

  Wenston and Mason both moved over to take a look at the envelope. Wenston reached for it. She pushed his hand back with a quick gesture and said, “Naughty, naughty! You can look, and that’s all.”

  “Your father wrote that?” Wenston asked.

  “That’s right, and you’ll notice the name, Doris O. Wickford, written on the envelope.”

  “The return address in the upper left-hand comer,” Mason said, “is that of George A. Wickford at Shanghai.”

  “That’s right. That was his real name. Here’s a photostatic copy of his marriage license to my mother. September, 1912, and here’s a copy of my birth certificate, November, 1913. You’ll notice my mother’s name was Octavia, and you’ll note that I was christened Doris Octavia Wickford.”

  Mason examined the photostatic copies of the documents, then raised his eyes to meet Wenston’s perplexed gaze.

  She said, “Now I’ll read you some of the excerpts from this letter. After all, remember I was a child of eight at the time, and he’s written to me the way a father would write to a girl of that age.”

  She took some folded sheets of paper from the envelope. They were written in pencil. The paper was a thin, limp rice paper characteristic of Chinese manufacture. She read, “ ‘My dear daughter: It seems like a very long time since your daddy has seen you. I miss you very much and hope you are being a good girl. I don’t know just when daddy is coming back to you, but I hope it won’t be long. Over here, I am doing some good business and expect to return and clean up all of the debts I owe. You must remember not to mention to anyone where daddy is because some of those people who made so much trouble for me would try to keep me from getting enough together to pay off what I owe. If they will only leave me alone for a little while longer, I can not only pay off everything, but have money left. Then I will come back to you, and we will be together for a long time. You can have nice dresses and a pony if you still want one.’ ”

  She looked up and said, “I had written him saying that I wanted a pony for Christmas.”

  “Your mother?” Mason asked.

  “She died when I was six, just before Dad went to China.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She turned back to the letter and read, “ ‘I have a very fine business here now, but I can’t tell you what it is. I have a partner. His name is Karr. Don’t you think that is a funny way for a man to spell his name? But he is a good partner, and he has lots of courage. Three weeks ago we were on a trip up the Yangtze River, and the boat he was in tipped over. Some of the Chinese boatmen clung to the overturned boat, but one of them was swept away. The current was very swift. This man couldn’t swim. He was only a Chinese, and over here the life of a laborer is not very valuable. I doubt if any one of the Chinese would have tried to rescue him, even if they had been strong swimmers. But my partner, Karr, swam out to the aid of this Chinaboy and brought him back to the boat. By that time my boat had come alongside, and the coolies managed to get it turned right side up. But we lost a lot of things in the river which we never recovered.

  “ ‘The water of this river is very yellow. It is filled with a kind of mud. Even after it flows out into the ocean, it stains the whole region around the mouth of the river. It is a very big river, and Shanghai is on a branch of it called the Whangpoo.

  “ ‘Shanghai is a very big city. You would never dream of the noise and bustle of one of these Chinese cities. It seems as though everyone is always screaming something at the top of his voice. You wouldn’t believe people could make that much noise.

  “ ‘Now daddy wants Doris to be a good little girl, and study hard in school. Your daddy is sorry he couldn’t send you that pony for Christmas, because there is no way of sending a pony from China to the United States, but some day soon when your daddy comes back, you shall have your pony. Lots of love from a lonely father to his little girl. Your loving DAD. P.S. When you write me over here, you can write the letter addressed to me, but be sure you put it care of Dow Tucker and send it care of the American Express Company. I will get it all right.’ ”

  She folded the letter, held it for a moment in her fingers as though contemplating whether she should pass it over to Mason for his inspection. Then abruptly she pushed it back into the envelope, and said simply, “I saved that one because it was the last letter I ever received. There were other letters, and I lost them. This one I kept. I never heard any more from him. I didn’t know what had happened to him.”

  Wenston tried to keep from seeming impressed. “You have someting else? Some better proof, perhaps?”

  She looked at him with the impersonal appraisal one would give an insect impaled on a pin and said, “I’ve got lots of proof. Here’s a picture—a family group taken the year my mother died. I was six at the time, almost seven.”

  She extracted a somewhat faded photograph from her purse. It was of the peculiar muddy tone which characterized the matte-surface prints of that period. It was a square picture three and a half inches by three and a half inches, and showed a man and a woman seated on what was apparently the upper step of a front porch. The man was holding a girl on his knee. Despite the pigtails and extreme youth of the girl in the picture, the resemblance to Doris Wickford was very pronounced.

  Wenston pursed his lips, caught Mason’s eye, and almost imperceptibly nodded.

  “You remember your father?” Mason asked.

  “Naturally. Of course, it’s the memory of a girl of seven years of age. I was seven the last time I saw him. I suppose there are some things on which my memory is distorted, and you’ll have to make allowances for youth, but aside from that, I remember him quite distinctly, numerous little things about him, his tolerance, his unfailing consideration of the rights of others, and, what didn’t impress me as being particularly remarkable at the time but what does now that I’ve seen more of the world, is that I never knew him to lose his temper over anything, or say a sharp word to anyone. And yet the man must have been beset by worries.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “The address is on this letter,” she said. “It was in Denver, Colorado.”

  “You lived there all the time until your father disappeared?”

  “He didn’t disappear. He simply went away. There weren’t any jobs in Denver, and . . .”

  “All right, have it your own way,” Mason interposed. “Had you lived there long? I notice that your birth certificate says that you were born in California.”

  “That’s right. We lived in California for a while, then went to Nevada, and then to Denver. My father had work in the mines. Conditions got so bad Dad made complaints and eventually started organizing the men. Unions had never gotten a hold in that locality, and the company fired him. Dad opened up a little store, and the miners all started buying their things from him. Then the company simply ruined him. They forced him into disastrous competition. They wanted to get him out of the country. They said his cracker-box socialism was going to ruin the country. That’s when he incurred all those debts. He . . .”

  Wenston said, “I guess, Mr. Mason, we’re going to have to see the guv’nor, after all.”

  Mason said, “We can check the incident of that upset boat in the Yangtze River before going any farther.”

  “We don’t have to,” Wenston said. “I’ve heard the guv’nor speak of it half a dozen times.”

  Mason sat at his desk for a moment drumming thoughtfully with his fingers on the edge of the desk. Abruptly, he asked Miss Wickford, “And you saw this ad in the paper this morning?”

  “No. The one that appeared yesterday morning.”

  “Why didn’t you answer it at once?”

  “I was working, and I—well,” she said with a little smile, “I arranged with my relief to have today off. I went to a hairdresser and then called the number mentioned in the ad. I asked for Mr. Karr. Mr. Wenston answered, said he was handling the preliminary interviews, and made an appointment. I never did have a chance to tell him any of my story. He rushed me right up here. Now, if that ad is on the level, I want to see Mr. Karr. It’s a matter of money with me. I’m not going to kid you, Mr. Mason, and I’m not going to kid myself. If there’s any money coming to me from my father, I need it.”

  “You’re employed?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. I’m an actress, and I can’t get a part. I had some bits in New York. A man promised he could get me a part in pictures if I came to Hollywood. He lied. Right at present I’m working as cashier in a cafeteria. And I don’t like it. It would be worth a good deal to be able to slap the boss’s face and walk out.”

  “With whom were you living while you were going to school?”

  “An aunt. She died about three years ago. Really, Mr. Mason, all of this can be verified. If there’s really anything back of this ad in the paper, we’re wasting a lot of time.”

  “I think the guv’nor would want to see her,” Wenston said to Mason and then added, “Right away.”

  Mason reached for his hat. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

  Chapter 13

  The people in the room were grouped in a tense-faced circle around the wheelchair occupied by Elston A. Karr. The day had been warm, yet the blanket covered his legs. His skin was no longer wax-like but was flushed. As his hand touched Mason’s, the lawyer noticed that the skin was dry and hot. Karr turned over the photograph and the letter, looked first at Johns Blaine, then at Gow Loong, the number one boy.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Blaine said nothing.

  Rodney Wenston said, “When I brought her to Mason, I thought she wath a damned imposter, but this proof is pretty convincing.”

  Doris Wickford said indignantly, “I’m not an impostor, and I’m tired of being treated like one. After all, this was your idea. I didn’t advertise to try and get in touch with you. You advertised to try and get in touch with me. If my father left any money, it isn’t yours, and there’s no reason why you should act as though giving it to me would be an act of generosity or charity on your part. After all, we have courts to protect the rights of people in cases like this.”

  Karr didn’t so much as glance at her. He kept his eyes on Gow Loong.

  Gow Loong extended his forefinger. The nail protruded a good half inch from the end of the finger. He placed this long nail on the face in the photograph. “Alla same Dow Tucker,” he said.

  Karr nodded.

  Gow Loong turned to Karr. “Maybe-so you tired. Too much work. Too much tlouble. Maybe-so you go sleep. Maybe one two hours. Wake up, feel more better. Too many people. Too much talk. Velly much no good.”

  Karr turned to Johns Blaine. “I see no reason for prolonging the matter. This girl seems to be it. We’ll have to make an additional check, but that’s Dow Tucker’s picture all right. What she says about how he came to adopt the name of Dow sounds logical. Get me that album of pictures out of the desk in my bedroom.”

  Gow Loong became merely a part of the scenery. He effaced himself beyond a point of silence. It seemed that even his personality had retired behind the expressionless composure of a calmly indifferent face. Johns Blaine hurried toward the bedroom.

  Mason asked casually, “Keep those pictures in your bedroom all the time?”

  “Prints,” Karr said. “The negatives are in a safe place. Wouldn’t take a million dollars for those negatives. Adventures in China that would curl your hair. I’ve seen things that white men aren’t permitted to see, things that no person should ever see. The Temple of the Passionate Buddha under the walls of the Forbidden City—the living dead man called up out of the grave to make obeisance to a Lama god. You might think it’s hypnotism, might think it’s superstition, might think it’s imagination, but I’ve seen things you can’t explain, things you can’t understand, things you don’t even dare to talk about. Take a look through that album, Johns. Get some of those pictures taken at Shanghai in the fall of ’20 and the spring of ’21.”

  Blaine turned the pages of the photograph album. “Here’s a picture taken on a junk on the Whangpoo,” he said. “That shows him pretty well.”

  “Show it to Mason,” Karr said. “Want him to see it.”

  Mason looked at the picture of three men seated on the high stern deck of a big junk. The camera had been focused upon the faces. Back of them was a hazy sheet of water, the dim line of a bank, and the fuzzy outlines of an out-of-focus pagoda rising against the sky. The men were smiling affably at the camera with that peculiarly inane expression with which one obeys the command to “look pleasant.” On a table before them was a huge teapot. Three Chinese cups were nestled into the distinctive hole-in-the-center saucers which furnish a sturdy resting place for Chinese soup-bowl cups. Behind the group, standing a little to one side, looking solicitously down at the man in the center, was a Chinese who was undoubtedly Gow Loong. The man in the center was Elston A. Karr, more robust, twenty years younger, but still with that same cold-eyed concentration glittering from his eyes, that ruthless, indomitable purpose stamped upon his face. There had been change in the twenty years. He had lost weight. His skin had stretched taut across his cheekbones, and there were puffs under his eyes; but there could be no mistaking Elston Karr.

  The man on his right was the man shown in the photograph produced by Doris Wickford. There could be no doubt of that, and the two photographs must have been taken at about the same time. The partially bald head, the snub nose, the long lower lip with the deep calipers stretching down from the nostrils, the cleft chin, the bushy eyebrows, the protruding batlike ears were unmistakable.

  The third man in the photograph caught Mason’s eye. He was a thick-chested, heavy-necked individual with thick lips that were twisted into a smile, but even in the photograph it was apparent that the eyes were not smiling. They were the sort of eyes that wouldn’t smile. They were staring in sullen contemplation at the lens of the camera. It was as though the man had been brooding so long upon some sinister scheme that his thoughts had stamped themselves indeliby upon his face.

  “Who’s this man?” Mason asked.

  Karr said, “A Judas—a dirty traitor—sold us out for his pieces of silver—almost brought about my death.” He looked up at Doris Wickford and said, “He was responsible for the death of your father. I shan’t forget him—ever.”

  There was something in the way he said that last that was as whisperingly ominous as the sound of a carving knife being sharpened on a steel.

  Mason compared the photograph in the book with that produced by Doris Wickford. Slowly he nodded his head, then asked, “Got any more pictures of Tucker?”

  Karr jerked his head to Johns Blaine, and Blaine, turning the leaves of the photograph album, paused four times more to show Mason photographs. Always there were the photographs of the same four men: Karr; his partner, Tucker; Gow Loong; and this heavy-set, sullen-faced man who had apparently betrayed them.

  Abruptly Karr said to Miss Wickford, “I want to check up on you. Where you lived, what you did, whom you knew.”

  “Of course. You realize I was rather a child when Dad left, but I have rather distinct memories. I can tell you the houses we lived in—some of them, at any rate. Would you mind telling me whether my father left any considerable amount of property?”

  “We had a partnership venture,” Karr said. “I didn’t know your father had any heirs. There was a partnership. We made some profit. He was killed. I didn’t make any formal accounting of his share. It wasn’t the sort of business you could offer for probate. We’d have been beheaded or hung if we’d been caught at it. Most dangerous, most risky business in the world, and the most fascinating. Betrayed by a damned Judas. But I got out of there with the money. I invested that money. The investments turned out well. Recently, Gow Loong mentioned that one night when Dow Tucker had been standing by the rail of the junk looking down at some little girls dancing on the landing in a Chinese village, he’d pointed out one little Chinese girl about seven or eight years old, and said that he had a daughter at home just about her age. He never spoke to me about it—very reticent about his private and family affairs. Gow Loong never realized the significance of it until later, when I was talking with him about the night Tucker was captured and killed. I’m tired. I’ll think it over. I’ll follow Gow Loong’s advice and rest. Give Mr. Blaine all the data you can think of, where you live, for whom you’ve worked, where you went to school, all the rest of it. Answer all questions Mr. Mason may ask.”