The Greatest Works of Earl Derr Biggers (Illustrated Edition). Earl Derr Biggers
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For myself, I am going to turn my attention to Miss Gloria Garland. What was that pearl from her necklace doing under the desk beside which Sir Frederic was killed?"
"A wise question," nodded Chan. "Miss Garland should now be invited to converse. May she prove more pointed talker than Miss Lila Barr."
"Let me call her up and ask her over here," suggested Kirk. "I'll tell her I want to have a talk with her in my office about last night's affair. She may arrive a bit less prepared with an explanation than if she knows it's the police who want to see her."
"Splendid," approved Miss Morrow. "But I'm afraid we're cutting in most frightfully on your business, Mr. Kirk. You must say so if we are."
"What business?" he inquired airily. "Like Sergeant Chan, I am now attached to your office. And I'm likely to grow more attached all the time. If you'll pardon me for a moment—"
He went to the telephone and reached Miss Garland at her apartment. The actress agreed to come at once.
As Kirk came away from the telephone, the doorbell rang and Paradise admitted a visitor. Captain Flannery strode into the room.
"Hello," he said. "You're all here, ain't you? I'd like to look round a bit—if I'm not butting in."
"Surely no one could be more warmly welcome," Chan told him.
"Thanks, Sergeant. You solved this problem yet?"
"Not up to date of present speaking," grinned Chan.
"Well, you're a little slow, ain't you?" Captain Flannery was worried, and not in the best of humor. "I thought from what I've read about you, you'd have the guilty man locked up in a closet for me, by this time."
Chan's eyes narrowed. "Challenge is accepted," he answered with spirit. "I have already obliged mainland policemen by filling a few closets with guilty men they could not catch. From my reading in newspapers, there still remains vast amount of work to do in same line."
"Is that so?" Flannery responded. He turned to Miss Morrow. "Did you talk with the Barr woman?"
"I did," said the girl. She repeated Lila Barr's story. Flannery heard her out in silence.
"Well," he remarked when she had finished, "you didn't get much, did you?"
"I'll have to admit I didn't," she replied.
"Maybe not as much as I could have got—and me not a woman, either. I'm going down now and have a talk with her myself. She don't look good to me. Cried because her fellow went and left her? Perhaps. But if you ask me, it takes more than that to make a woman cry nowadays."
"You may be right," Miss Morrow agreed.
"I know I'm right. And let me tell you something else—I'm going to be on hand when you talk with Gloria Garland. Make up your mind to that right now."
"I shall be glad to have you. Miss Garland is on her way here to meet us in the office down-stairs."
"Fine. I'll go and take a look at this weepy dame. If the Garland woman comes before I'm back, you let me know. I've been in this game thirty years, young woman, and no district attorney's office can freeze me out. When I conduct an investigation, I conduct it."
He strode from the room. Chan looked after him without enthusiasm. "How loud is the thunder, how little it rains," he murmured beneath his breath.
"We'd better go to the office," suggested Kirk. "Miss Garland is likely to arrive at any moment."
They went below. The sun was blazing brightly in the middle room; the events of the foggy night now passed seemed like a bad dream. Kirk sat down at his desk, opened a drawer, and handed Chan a couple of press clippings.
"Want to look at those?" he inquired. "As I told you this morning, it appears that Sir Frederic was interested, not only in Eve Durand, but in other missing women as well."
Chan read the clippings thoughtfully, and laid them on the desk. He sighed ponderously. "A far-reaching case," he remarked, and was silent for a long time.
"A puzzler, even to you," Kirk said at length.
Chan came to himself with a start. "Pardon, please? What did you say?"
"I said that even the famous Sergeant Chan is up against it this time."
"Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. But I was not thinking of Sir Frederic. A smaller, less important person occupied my mind. Without fail I must go to little Barry Chan on next Wednesday's boat."
"I hope you can," smiled Miss Morrow. "Not many men are as devoted to their families nowadays as you are."
"Ah—you do not understand," said Chan. "You mainland people—I observe what home is to you. An unprivate apartment, a pigeonhole to dive into when the dance or the automobile ride is ended. We Chinese are different. Love, marriage, home, still we cling to unfashionable things like that. Home is a sanctuary into which we retire, the father is high priest, the altar fires burn bright."
"Sounds rather pleasant," remarked Barry Kirk. "Especially that about the father. By the way, I must send my namesake a cablegram and wish him luck."
Miss Gloria Garland appeared in the outer office, and Kinsey escorted her into the middle room. She was not quite so effective in the revealing light of day as she had been at a candle-lighted dinner table. There were lines about her eyes, and age was peering from beneath the heavy make-up.
"Well, here I am, Mr. Kirk," she said. "Oh—Miss Morrow—and Mr. Chan. I'm a wreck, I know. That thing last night upset me terribly—such a charming man, Sir Frederic. Has—has anything been unearthed—any clue?"
"Nothing much," replied Kirk, "as yet. Please sit down."
"Just a moment," said Miss Morrow. "I must get Captain Flannery."
"I will go, please," Chan told her, and hurried out.
He pushed open the door of the office occupied by the Calcutta Importers. Captain Flannery was standing, red-faced and angry, and before him sat Lila Barr, again in tears. The Captain swung about. "Yes?" he snapped.
"You are wanted, Captain," Chan said. "Miss Garland is here."
"All right." He turned to the weeping girl. "I'll see you again, young woman." She did not reply. He followed Chan to the hall.
"You too have some success as a tear-starter," suggested Chan.
"Yeah—she's the easiest crier I've met this year. I wasn't any too gentle with her. It don't pay."
"Your methods, of course, had amazing success?"
"Oh—she stuck to her story. But you take it from me, she knows more than she's telling. Too many tears for an innocent bystander. I'll bet you a hundred dollars right now that she's Eve Durand."
Chan shrugged. "My race," he said, "possesses great fondness for gambling. Not to go astray into ruin, I am compelled to overlook even easy methods of gain in that line."
Captain Flannery was driven back to his favorite phrase. "Is that so?" he replied, and they entered Kirk's office.
When they were all in the middle room, Barry Kirk shut the door on the interested Mr. Kinsey. Captain Flannery faced Gloria Garland.
"I want to see you. You know who I am. I was up-stairs last night. So your name's Gloria Garland, is it?"
She looked up at him a bit apprehensively. "Yes, of course."
"Are you telling your real name, lady?"
"Well, it's the name I have used for many years. I—"
"Oh? So it isn't the real one?"
"Not exactly. It's a name I took—"
"I see. You took a name that didn't belong to you." The Captain's tone implied a state's prison offense. "You had reasons, I suppose?"
"I certainly had." The woman looked at him with growing anger. "My name was Ida Pingle, and I didn't think that would go well in the theater.