The Greatest Works of Earl Derr Biggers (Illustrated Edition). Earl Derr Biggers
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a way, he is. I've spent a lot of time on the desert myself. In spite of the story writers, it's the most law-abiding place in America today. Nobody ever locks a door, or so much as thinks of thieves. Ask the average rancher about police protection, and he'll look surprised and murmur something about a sheriff several hundred miles away. But for all that—"
Eden got up again and walked anxiously about the room. "For all that—or rather, for those very reasons, I don't like the idea at all. Suppose somebody did want to play a crooked game—what a setting for it! Away out there on that ocean of sand, with only the Joshua trees for neighbors. Suppose I send Bob down there with your necklace, and he walks into a trap. Madden may not be at that lonely ranch. He may have gone east. He may even, by the time Bob gets there, have gone west—as they said in the war. Lying out on the desert, with a bullet in him—"
Victor laughed derisively. "Look here, your imagination is running away with you," he cried.
Eden smiled. "Maybe it is," he admitted. "Begins to look as though I were growing old, eh, Sally?" He took out his watch. "But where's Bob? Ought to be here by now. If you don't mind, I'll use your telephone."
He called the dock, and came away from the phone with a still more worried look. "The President Pierce got in a full forty-five minutes ago," he announced. "Half an hour should bring them here."
"Traffic's rather thick at this hour," Victor reminded him.
"Yes—that's right, too," Eden agreed. "Well, Sally, I've told you the situation. What do you think?"
"What should she think?" Victor cut in. "Madden's bought the necklace and wants it delivered on the desert. It isn't up to us to question his orders. If we do, he may get annoyed and call the whole deal off. No, our job is to deliver the pearls, get his receipt, and wait for his check." His puffy white hands twitched eagerly.
Eden turned to his old friend. "Is that your opinion, Sally?"
"Why, yes, Alec," she said. "I fancy Victor is right." She looked at her son proudly. Eden also looked at him, but with a vastly different expression.
"Very good," he answered. "Then there is no time to be lost. Madden is in a great hurry, as he wants to start for New York very soon. I shall send Bob with the necklace at eleven o'clock tonight—but I absolutely refuse to send him alone."
"I'll go along," Victor offered.
Eden shook his head. "No," he objected, "I prefer a policeman, even though he does belong to a force as far away as Honolulu. This Charlie Chan—do you think, Sally, that you could persuade him to go with Bob?"
She nodded. "I'm sure of it. Charlie would do anything for me."
"All right—that's settled. But where the devil are they? I tell you, I'm worried—"
The telephone interrupted him, and Madame Jordan went to answer it. "Oh—hello, Charlie," she said. "Come right up. We're on the fourth floor—number 492. Yes. Are you alone?" She hung up the receiver and turned back into the room. "He says he is alone," she announced.
"Alone," repeated Eden. "Why—I don't understand that—" He sank weakly into a chair.
A moment later he looked up with interest at the chubby little man his hostess and her son were greeting warmly at the door. The detective from Honolulu stepped farther into the room, an undistinguished figure in his Western clothes. He had round fat cheeks, an ivory skin, but the thing about him that caught Eden's attention was the expression in his eyes, a look of keen brightness that made the pupils gleam like black buttons in the yellow light.
"Alec," said Sally Jordan, "this is my old friend, Charlie Chan. Charlie—Mr. Eden."
Chan bowed low. "Honors crowd close on this mainland," he said. "First I am Miss Sally's old friend, and now I meet Mr. Eden."
Eden rose. "How do you do," he said.
"Have a good crossing, Charlie?" Victor asked.
Chan shrugged. "All time big Pacific Ocean suffer sharp pain down below, and toss about to prove it. Maybe from sympathy, I am in same fix."
Eden came forward. "Pardon me if I'm a little abrupt—but my son—he was to meet your ship—"
"So sorry," Chan said, regarding him gravely. "The fault must indubitably be mine. Kindly overlook my stupidity, but there was no meeting at dock."
"I can't understand it," Eden complained again.
"For some few minutes I linger round gang-board," Chan continued. "No one ventures to approach out of rainy night. Therefore I engage taxi and hurry to this spot."
"You've got the necklace?" Victor demanded.
"Beyond any question," Chan replied. "Already I have procured room in this hotel, partly disrobing to remove same from money-belt about waist." He tossed an innocent-looking string of beads down upon the table. "Regard the Phillimore pearls at journey's end," he grinned. "And now a great burden drops from my shoulders with a most delectable thud."
Eden, the jeweler, stepped forward and lifted the string in his hands. "Beautiful," he murmured, "beautiful. Sally, we should never have let Madden have them at the price. They're perfectly matched—I don't know that I ever saw—" He stared for a moment into the rosy glow of the pearls, then laid them again on the table. "But Bob—where is Bob?"
"Oh, he'll be along," remarked Victor, taking up the necklace. "Just a case of missing each other."
"I am the faulty one," insisted Chan. "Shamed by my blunder—"
"Maybe," said Eden. "But—now that you have the pearls, Sally, I'll tell you something else. I didn't want to worry you before. This afternoon at four o'clock some one called me—Madden again, he said. But something in his voice—anyhow, I was wary. Pearls were coming on the President Pierce, were they? Yes. And the name of the messenger? Why should I tell him that, I inquired. Well, he had just got hold of some inside facts that made him feel the string was in danger, and he didn't want anything to happen. He was in a position to help in the matter. He insisted, so I finally said: 'Very good, Mr. Madden. Hang up your receiver and I'll call you back in ten minutes with the information you want.' There was a pause, then I heard him hang up. But I didn't phone the desert. Instead I had that call traced, and I found it came from a pay-station in a cigar store at the corner of Sutter and Kearny Streets."
Eden paused. He saw Charlie Chan regarding him with deep interest.
"Can you wonder I'm worried about Bob?" the jeweler continued. "There's some funny business going on, and I tell you I don't like it—"
A knock sounded on the door, and Eden himself opened it. His son stepped into the room, debonair and smiling. At sight of him, as so often happens in such a situation, the anxious father's worry gave way to a deep rage.
"You're a hell of a business man," he cried.
"Now, father—no compliments," laughed Bob Eden. "And me wandering all over San Francisco in your service."
"I suppose so. That's about what you would be doing, when it was your job to meet Mr. Chan at the dock."
"Just a moment, dad." Bob Eden removed a glistening rain coat. "Hello, Victor. Madame Jordan. And this, I imagine, is Mr. Chan."
"So sorry to miss meeting at dock," murmured Chan. "All my fault, I am sure—"
"Nonsense," cried the jeweler. "His fault, as usual. When, in heaven's name, are you going to show a sense of responsibility?"
"Now, dad. And a sense of responsibility is just what I've only this minute stopped showing nothing else but."
"Good lord—what language is that? You didn't meet Mr. Chan, did you?"
"Well, in a way, I didn't—"
"In a way? In a way!"
"Precisely. It's a long story, and I'll tell it if you'll stop interrupting with these unwarranted attacks on my character. I'll sit down, if I may. I've been about a bit, and I'm tired."
He