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 impa.s.sive 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 l.u.s.trous 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 subst.i.tution.

Now all of the originals were gone... enough to represent a theft far surpa.s.sing 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 ch.o.r.e, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 a.s.sistant 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 t.i.tle 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 Ma.s.sacre."

"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 pa.s.sed 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 - d.a.m.n you, you've got me talking your pidgin!"

Chan masked a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 d.a.m.nable 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 n.a.z.imova'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 G.o.ddan 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 pa.s.sage 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 paG.o.da-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 a.s.sent, 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 pa.s.sage that ran the east-west length of the building, staircase and elevator faced one another. The plump, hennaed lady pushed the lift b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al mentors - Confucius, Lao T'se and Li Tai Po, were agreed that the h.o.a.rding 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 gla.s.sed 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.