The Case of the Accursed Amulet Part Three

THE CASE OF THE ACCURSED AMULET

A Phantom Sleuth Adventure

First published in Apeshit!, 2013

Part Three

A few short hours later, Brian Twain was in a private room in Stockport General Hospital where Jane Wayland hovered over him like a mother hen.  The knife had been removed from his back and given to the police, the wound stitched and bandaged.  Brian was then placed in a room for overnight observation, and the nurses came and went in a steady stream under Jane’s careful scrutiny.  Eventually, a man in a white doctor’s coat entered.

“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Saunders.”

At the sound of the name, Brian looked up with immediate interest.  He didn’t recognize the face with the bulbous nose and sagging jowls, but he knew the voice behind the disguise.

“You’re not the doctor we saw earlier,” Jane remarked.

“No ma’am,” said the man in the white coat as he stepped up to the bed, grabbed the clipboard and began looking through the charts.  “I’m a specialist on nerve damage.  My colleague asked that I make the time to give your condition a quick appraisal.”  He looked up at Jane, smiled.  “Miss, would you mind stepping outside so that I may conduct my examination?  I promise it shall be brief.”

Jane absorbed the worrisome prospect of nerve damage and quickly consented.  The man in the white coat thanked her, held the door open as she left the room.  Then he closed the door, pulled the shade down on its window and turned back to the patient.  “I came as soon as I heard, Brian!  What happened?”

Brian grinned and said, “Hello Byron!”  He lost the grin.  “I’ll tell you what happened:  I was stabbed in the back by a monkey!”

Byron Twain frowned through his disguise.  “A monkey?  You’d better tell me everything.”

Brian wasted no time in relating the adventure thus far.  The account was cold and factual, a detailed history, with no words wasted for the sake of entertainment.  As Brian came to the end of his tale, he reached out to the nightstand by his bed, seized a scrap of paper and held it out to his disguised twin.  “Jane has threatened to watch over me all night long.  You’ll have to pick up the trail and this is the only clue I can offer you.”

The man in the white coat took the paper and frowned at the name and address at the top of the page.  “An empty receipt from the Jade Lotus Laundry?”   He turned it over and recognized Montgomery Fisk’s address, written in neat, penciled letters.

Brian nodded.  “I believe the Chinaman dropped it in Fisk’s gardens during our little tussle.  It could lead you straight to him…”  Then he slumped in his bed.  “…or it could be a dead end.”

Byron stowed the receipt in a pocket of the white coat.  “I’ll look into it.  In the meanwhile, you heal up.” 

* * *

The Jade Lotus was deep in Stockport’s Chinatown, a neighborhood cramped onto the brick-and-stone quays across the harbor from the shipping docks where the Gertrude Burrows made port.  It was a three-story brownstone with crumbling mortar, boards criss-crossed over the windows and doors, and a painted sign for the laundry which bore chipped letters and fading image of an exotic green flower. 

Byron Twain; now clad in the gray hat, coat, and mask of the Sleuth’s costume; skulked through the deep shadows of dusk seeking an entrance to the disused edifice.  At the rear he found a pair of double-doors which covered a basement entrance.  Close inspection revealed that although the boards were crossed over both doors, they were only nailed to one.  To the casual passer-by, it offered the illusion that this entrance was barred like all the other portals of the building.

The Sleuth cast his eyes up and down the back street.  Spying no lookouts, he entered through the sham-blockade and pulled the doors quietly closed behind him to maintain the illusion. 

He descended the creaking stairs into a basement crowded with boilers, furnaces, and water pumps.  The spaces between these dusty, rusting machines were filled with crates and stuffed sacks that were piled up like sandbags against a flood.  Out of the corner of his eye, the Sleuth spied a movement off to his right.  With soft footsteps, he proceeded to investigate. 

A gray skull lunged out from behind a crate, surrounded by a mass of golden-brown fur.  It screeched at him with sudden ferocity, and instinct forced him to step back.  Before he could suppress this basic human urge, strong arms emerged beneath his own arms and reached up to his neck in a submission hold.  Grunting in exertion, he struggled to break free, but failed.  Unable to extricate himself, the Sleuth heard urgent voices behind him babbling in what he assumed was some Chinese dialect.  There was a burst of pain on the crown of his head, and everything went black.

*  *  *

The Sleuth awoke with a throbbing head.  He wanted to rub the pain away and found his wrists tied to the arms of the chair he was sitting in.  His ankles were likewise secured to the chair legs.  A quick look around revealed that his chair was in a cement-lined depression—not unlike a swimming pool—with a drain in the center of the floor and a pair of pipes that stretched up to the ceiling high overhead.  A set of narrow stairs led to an open walkway that surrounded the pit, but there were no other features.

A stern-faced Chinaman stood over him, with appraising eyes and a bottle of smelling salts in hand.  Satisfied with what he saw, the Chinaman corked the salts, folded his arms into the sleeves of his black robes and called up to the walkway above.

Another Chinaman stepped up to the brink and looked down into the pit with hard eyes.  Unlike his fellows, he wore a voluminous yellow robe that was covered with an intricate Oriental design in crimson thread.  He had fat cheeks and a babyish face behind a long black mustache and a tall forehead that stretched up to his bald cranium.

The man in the yellow robe descended the steps and approached the Sleuth as the Chinaman in black bowed and backed away in reverence.  The man in yellow regarded the Sleuth in silent contemplation for a long moment.  Then, at last, he spoke.  “Good evening.”  His voice was nasal, his tone curt.  “When my servants first informed me of a trespasser, the news was not so engaging.  However, once they described you, my interest piqued.”

The Sleuth frowned up at him.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Lao Shiang,” the newcomer replied.  “Sometimes I am called ‘The Dragon’s Claw’.  You may or may not have heard of me.”

“I’m sorry, no,” the Sleuth admitted.

Lao Shiang smiled.  “Fear not, I am not offended.  Indeed, I strive very hard to remain anonymous and unknown in my endeavors.  However, very little occurs amid the local criminal underworld without coming to my attention, hence my interest in you.”

The Sleuth looked up sharply from his bonds.  “What do you mean?”

“I deduce that you are this mysterious Sleuth whom I have heard about,” Lao Shiang hypothesized aloud.  “You have been connected to various crimes—many thwarted, and many that were successful.  Yet you have never been apprehended, and I daresay that few can give a reliable report about you.  You come and go like a phantom.  Yes, I believe you are the Sleuth.  Tell me please, am I correct?”

The Sleuth’s eyes wandered about the dimly lit basin as he considered his answer.  “Yes, I suppose you are.”

Lao Shiang clapped his hands together in triumph.  “I have wondered for some time now whether or not you truly exist!” he laughed.  “The thought has occurred to me that you were merely an invention for the purpose of propaganda.  Either invented by the authorities in a vain effort to dissuade criminal enterprise, or by the criminal element as a red herring to confound police.

“But instead you are real!” the Chinaman marveled.  “If half of what I have heard of you is truth, then you are a most extraordinary person!  It is an honor to meet you at long last!”  He offered a deep, respectful bow.

“Funny way to show it,” the Sleuth replied, tugging at the ropes that held him secured to the chair. 

“I apologize for the necessary precaution,” Lao Shiang stated, his tone devoid of emotion.  “I have heard conflicting reports about your personal disposition.  Although Commissioner Wayland publicly denies your existence, it is rumored that he has a secret file about you, and regards you a great criminal threat.  Contrariwise, other rumors insist that you were instrumental in the downfall of countless criminals.  So, you see, I have yet to determine whether or not I can trust you.  Exactly whose side are you on?”

“I am on the side of justice,” the Sleuth said in a defiant voice.

Lao Shiang sneered.  “An unsatisfactory response, for justice is highly speculative.  Its definition depends greatly on one’s point-of-view.  What purpose has brought you here to the Jade Lotus?”

“I have come to retrieve the pendant of Mo Tzu and return it to Montgomery Fisk, the rightful owner,” the Sleuth declared.

The man in the yellow robe nodded and let loose a heavy sigh.  “That is unfortunate, for it means we are at odds.  I had hoped that you could be persuaded to work in accord with my organization?”  He looked askance at the Sleuth, who offered a wry smile and shook his head.  “A pity.  Under different circumstances I suspect we could have worked together quite well.  Instead I fear I shall have to kill you.”

The Sleuth straightened in his seat.  “Kill me?”

“Of course.”  Lao Shiang raised his arms and indicated the room around them.  “This is a sub-basement beneath the laundry.  This vat you are seated in is meant to hold seawater, pumped in from the harbor.”  He waved one hand to the pipes that ran from the pit to the ceiling.  “It is then meant to be taken up through pipes to the laundry machines on the floors above.  But we will only fill this basin, and you will drown as we abandon these premises permanently.”

The Sleuth shrugged in his restraints.  “Why leave?  Once I’m dead, I won’t be revealing your hide-out to anyone.”

“True,” the Chinaman mused.  “However, from what little I have heard of your exploits, I deduce you have some organization—whether great or small, I cannot tell—at your disposal.  Therefore, I must assume assistance in some form will come to this place in search of you.  Only a fool would risk assuming otherwise.  I am no fool, so we make haste to depart before your agents may come to your aid.”  Lao Shiang turned to the narrow stairs, paused, turned back and advanced on his prisoner.  “But first I must satisfy my curiosity.  If you will indulge me…”

Lao Shiang reached out with one hand, pulled the mask up onto the Sleuth’s forehead.  The Chinaman gawked for a long moment at the sagging jowls and bulbous nose that Byron Twain hid behind to infiltrate his twin’s hospital room.  Lao Shiang grunted thoughtfully and returned the mask to the Sleuth’s eyes.  “Your face is not known to me and not at all as I expected.”

His curiosity sated, Lao Shiang turned on his heel and climbed the stairs.  A subtle wave prompted his servant to follow him.  The Dragon’s Claw issued orders in his native tongue; the servant bowed and retreated beyond the Sleuth’s limited view.  The golden brown monkey scuttled up to Lao Shiang, chortled, held up the ornate box to its master.

“An interesting animal you have there,” the Sleuth remarked.

The villain looked down at the simian, smiled, and took the proffered box.  “Yes, he is a Sichuan golden hair monkey from the Shaanxi province.  He has proven a clever pet, and has learned many useful tricks.”

The squeal of metal on metal filled the air as a rusty valve was forced open after a long rest.  Seawater poured into the pit from some opening behind the Sleuth.  In a matter of minutes, the water covered his shoes.

“I apologize for the mundanity of this death,” the Dragon’s Claw lamented.  “I feel an extraordinary man deserves a more worthy demise.  Alas, I am pressed for time.  Farewell O Sleuth, may you go to whatever Heaven suits you best.”  Then he turned and walked away, followed by his pet.

To Be Concluded...