The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (75 page)

Brander said, meekly: “Who would believe the truth?” Then, louder, with undertones of a new hysteria: “The dead are dead. They must rest in peace. Always rest. They are from hell if they walk . . .”

Then he mumbled, and his voice tailed off as he raised his eyes, and his gaze saw far beyond the mountain and the blue of the sky.

A
ll kinds of people came into the welfare office, and Sandra Grey was so well versed in the diverse aspects of human misery that nothing much surprised her. But this visitor did. Both physically and by contrast. She had closed up her desk and was putting on her hat after a long day when his voice from the doorway made her jump.

“I say, is this where I’m to leave this?”

Sandra turned and saw a big-shouldered, floridly handsome man in an expensive raglan topcoat. He was holding in his arms a tiny ragged child – awkwardly, in the way men do who do not know how to handle babies.

Sandra stared at him. For a second she was completely at a loss – his appearance, the child, the request. In his turn the man stared at her. Sandra was enough to take any man aback. He looked jerkily around, as if he could not connect the drab office, with its heaps of cast-off clothing, boxes of canned goods, bushel baskets of shoes, with this radiant, slim, smart girl, whose wide brown eyes were like deep velvet.

He said uncertainly: “This
is
the welfare office, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Sandra. “What’s the trouble?”

He nodded his big florid face at the child. “I found this boy down in the building entry with a note on him. I stopped in at the clinic downstairs and they said to bring him up here, or to call the police.”

“Oh!” said Sandra.

She stepped quickly across, took the boy from him. He was a little, laughing, curly-headed fellow, no more than three at the most. He reached up a chubby hand, experimentally took hold of the end of Sandra’s nose.

“What a darling!” Sandra sat him down on her desk. He had wide gentian-colored eyes, bright with a baby’s mischief. He began chuckling to himself, exploring in a tall basket of shoes beside the desk. Sandra’s eyes flashed up to the stranger. “A note! You mean—”

“He’s abandoned.”

“Oh, how terrible!” Sandra had found the note by now, sewed into the ragged collar of his thin blouse. It read simply, in crude printing: “Be good to him.”

Sandra felt compassion well up, an ache in her heart. “How could anyone abandon such a darling?”

The man shook his head. He had an abrupt, awkward manner, entirely out of keeping with his air of breeding, his expensively tailored clothes, his big, impressive handsomeness. He said gruffly:

“What will you do with him?”

Sandra shook her head. “Take him to the orphanage, I suppose.” She took her slip-over sweater from a chair, began to roll it up. “I’ll drop him off on my way home. Thank you for bringing him up, Mr—”

“Gawdy.”

“Mr Gawdy.” Sandra decided the name aptly described his type of handsomeness. His ruddy face was too high-colored, his eyes too brightly blue, his topcoat too brilliantly golden.

She slipped the sweater over the boy’s head. A sudden, curiously sharp feeling of fear caught her. She realized afterward it was an intuition: if she had only caught up the child, sweater and all, rushed away with him, out of the office, away, away, anywhere-she might have avoided the horrible event looming so close at hand. Instead she went on pulling the chubby little hands through the knitted sleeves. The big man cleared his throat.

“I’d kind of like to give something, to give him a help along.” He was fishing in a shark-skin billfold.

“Oh, thank you,” said Sandra. “That’s generous of you. I’ll see that it—”

There was a knock on the jamb of the open door.

Sandra turned. A Chinese stood there, young, moon faced, bland, dressed in a loud herringbone suit with a snap-brimmed hat jauntily on the back of his head. He immediately started to back out.

“So sorry. You are busy.”

“No, no, come in; don’t mind me,” said the big man. He sat down, as if interested to observe the workings of a welfare office.

The Chinese came in. He had a squat and powerful body, that rippled with the same smooth blandness, the same easy suavity, as his voice.

“You are Miss Sandra Grey?”

“Yes.”

The Chinese creased his almond eyes. “I have come to beg your indulgence, Miss Grey. A very great favor. Having heard of your generosity, which is indeed a byword in the neighborhood” – he creased his eyes still more – “I have come to ask your help in a distressing family matter.”

His English was perfect, impeccable, as smooth as oil. He gestured slightly with two squat fingers, between which was an unlighted gold-tipped cigarette.

“I am here in behalf of my uncle, an old man who speaks only Cantonese. The matter concerns his daughter-my cousin – a young lady who has disappeared after a violent family quarrel. I have come to ask if you, Miss Grey, will find her.”

Sandra blinked. “You want
me
to find your cousin?”

The Chinese lifted his squat shoulders, dropped them. His bland smile was sad. “You are our last hope.”

“Won’t you sit down, Mr—”

“Dow.”

Mr Dow did not sit down, but lighted the gold-tipped cigarette, which emitted a rank odor of violet. “The old man is heartbroken. If he could only get this message to her, asking her to return, he would be happy.” He took from his pocket a bamboo tube, gave it to Sandra. “In this, after the Cantonese fashion, is the individual plea of every member of the family. If you could get it to her, you would make an old man happy, reunite a family.”

Sandra turned over the tube. It was about ten inches long and sealed elaborately at one end with red sealing wax, in which a gold cord was embedded to break the wax. She said uncertainly:

“I don’t know how I could locate her.”

“I believe she has taken a job through an employment agency called the Acme. Unfortunately she has left instructions not to tell her whereabouts to any of her race, so my efforts with the Acme are fruitless. I believe she has a job as housemaid; and
for you
, Miss Grey, I am sure the Acme—”

The big figure of Gawdy showed a sudden interest. “What’s that? I have some friends who have a Chinese housemaid.”

“Indeed.” Dow’s round face turned in polite surprise.

“Their name is Delaunay.” Gawdy spelled it. “I can give you their address.”

“Thank you.” Dow’s smile was faintly deprecatory. “There are, of course, many Chinese girls in service. But the Acme could verify it for
you
, Miss Grey.”

“What is your cousin’s name?”

“Helen Ying.”

“I’ll try to locate her for you, Mr Dow.”

“The lady is as generous as she is lovely.” Dow’s creased eyes inclined over his cigarette. “I will stop in myself, tomorrow, to learn if you have any success. Permit me to depart in the American manner.”

He extended his hand, and as Sandra took it, she felt he was palming something in it. She looked down at her hand in surprise, and as she looked up again, the Chinese was gone. Gawdy was staring after him.

“Queer customer,” he said. “See here. I’m going by the Delaunays’ and—”

“What on earth—” Sandra was staring at what Dow had left in her hand. It was a compact, compressed, folded square of paper. She unfolded it, saw a rice-paper envelope, carefully sealed. On it was typed:

Sandra red lips parted. “Give this to her employer!” Her eyes flashed to Gawdy. “Look. He gave me this. He must mean, give it to his
cousin’s
employer!”

Gawdy was staring at it. “He gave that to you?”

“Yes, slipped it in my hand as he was going out!”

“Well, I’ll be—” Gawdy got up. “See here. He looked shady to me. Open it, see what it says!”

A piercing scream rent their ears.

They whirled. The little boy had picked up the bamboo tube, hammered it on the desk, knocked the sealing wax loose. Liquid, spurting from it like a geyser, sprayed over his knees and feet, fuming, bubbling, viscous liquid.

“Great God!” cried Sandra. “Acid!”

It was a moment that would remain stamped on her soul as long as she lived. She saw his creamy flesh, his little knees, quivering, contracting, under that searing, slow-crawling flood. She caught his little body in her arms, bucking, wild, convulsive, screaming as only a child can in unendurable pain. Sandra hardly knew what she was doing. She heard Gawdy yell, “Get that Chinaman!” and dash out the door like a bull. She ran headlong at the glass water cooler, plunged the boy’s feet and knees into the deluge of water. The choking fumes caught at her, throat-tearing, strangling. She whirled, burst through the door, went like an arrow downstairs toward the clinic one flight below.

She didn’t know who was there, whom she plunged through. She saw the white blot of a doctor’s apron.

“Acid! Acid! He’s burned!”

Strong hands took the boy from her. Other hands guided her, made her sit down. She was blinded, choking and coughing from the fumes. For a time she could only gag, try to catch her breath, listen to that unendurable screaming. A nurse she knew had her by both shoulders.

“Sandra! Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes.” The screaming had stopped. She saw the doctor’s white form, caught at him. “Will he live? Will he—”

“Yes. You got him in water; best thing you could do.” The doctor’s eyes were tight. “I’ve given him morphine. It was sulphuric acid. How did it ever get on the child?”

Sandra heard herself trying to explain. It sounded garbled, impossible. Her mind was still stunned, uncollected.
Acid
was in that tube the bland, suave Dow had given her. Her brain was a maze of horror.

The doctor was aghast. “He was sending sulphuric acid – by you – to a girl?”

“Yes, yes. A Chinese housemaid who—”

For the first time she opened her clenched right hand, saw the rice-paper envelope still clutched in it. It acted on her like an electric shock. “Give this to her employer.”

She sprang up, so abruptly she almost pushed the nurse over. Her eyes were not like velvet now, but like tawny flame.

“Ellen, lock up upstairs for me, will you? Call the police; tell them to talk to that man Gawdy!” She was already at the door. “I’ll be back, I don’t know when!”

The Delaunay house sat stately and brooding among twilight shadows when Sandra rang the bell under its aristocratic portico. The lank, grave face of a butler answered the soft sound of its triple door chime. Sandra burst out:

“Do you have a housemaid here named Helen Ying?”

The butler stared. “Why, yes, miss.”

“Let me speak to Mr Delaunay.”

The butler blinked. “Who shall I say is—”

A deep voice said from behind: “Who is it, Sanders?”

Sandra pushed in. “You’re Mr Delaunay?”

“I’m John Delaunay, yes.”

He was an old man, as thin as a grasshopper, leaning on a thick blackthorn cane. His mild and benignant face was filled with wrinkles like transparent wax paper that has been crumpled and then flattened out.

“I’m Sandra Grey. I run the welfare office for St. Luke’s charities. Something terrible has happened, and if I could speak to you a moment—”

“Of course. Of course.”

He guided her into the paneled entrance of a library. The first thing Sandra saw as she came in the room was a man on a sofa with his arms around a girl trying to kiss her. They both sprang up; Sandra backed out; the old man gently impelled her in again and snapped on the wall switch.

“Well, bless me,” he said mildly, “I didn’t know you two were in here Miss Grey, this is my daughter Marceline.”

Marceline was a flashily pretty brunette with brilliant black eyes. The brilliant eyes glared at Sandra. She did not say anything. She sat down at the extreme end of the sofa and gave her whole attention to a bowl of goldfish. The man was sitting in an armchair leafing through the pages of a book. He was hawk-faced, olive-cheeked, with a Vandyke beard cupping his chin like a spearhead. It was a ridiculous and awkward second for Sandra. She turned to speak to Mr Delaunay, but the old man was puttering forward to take the Vandyked man by the arm.