May we meet again. Good-by.”

Like a grim, relentless Buddha he disappeared below. Kirk and the girl reentered the office, Captain Flannery was eagerly on the hunt.

Chan walked briskly through the fog to the Stewart Hotel. At the desk the clerk handed him a cable, which he read with beaming face. He was still smiling when, in his room, the telephone rang. It was Kirk.

“Look here,” Kirk said. “We made the most astonishing discovery in the office after you left.”

“Pleased to hear it,” Chan replied.

“Under the desk - a pearl from Gloria Garland’s necklace!”

“Opening up,” said Chan, “a new field of wonderment. Hearty congratulations.”

“But see here,” Kirk cried, “aren’t you interested? Won’t you stay and help us get at the bottom of this?”

Again that stubborn look in Charlie’s eyes. “Not possible. Only a few minutes back I have a cable that calls me home with unbearable force. Nothing holds me on the mainland now.”

“A cable? From whom?”

“From my wife. Glorious news. We are now in receipt of our eleventh child - a boy.”

CHAPTER V

The Voice in the Next Room


CHARLIE CHAN rose at eight the next morning, and as he scraped the stubble of black beard from his cheeks, he grinned happily at his reflection in the glass. He was thinking of the small, helpless boy-child who no doubt at this moment lay in the battered old crib on Punchbowl Hill. In a few days, the detective promised himself, he would stand beside that crib, and the latest Chan would look up to see, at last, his father’s welcoming smile.

He watched a beetle-browed porter wheel his inexpensive little trunk off on the first leg of its journey to the Matson docks, and then neatly placed his toilet articles in his suitcase. With jaunty step he went down to breakfast.

The first page of the morning paper carried the tragic tale of Sir Frederic’s passing, and for a moment Chan’s eyes narrowed. A complicated mystery, to be sure. Interesting to go to the bottom of it - but that was the difficult task of others. Had it been his duty, he would have approached it gallantly, but, from his point of view, the thing did not concern him. Home - that alone concerned him now.

He laid the paper down, and his thoughts flew back to the little boy in Honolulu. An American citizen, a future boy scout under the American flag, he should have an American name. Chan had felt himself greatly attracted to his genial host of the night before. Barry Chan - what was the matter with that?

As he was finishing his tea, he saw in the dining-room door the thin, nervous figure of Bill Rankin, the reporter. He signed his check, left a generous tip, and joined Rankin in the lobby.

“Hello,” said the reporter. “Well, that was some little affair up at the Kirk Building last night.”

“Most distressing,” Chan replied. They sat down on a broad sofa, and Rankin lighted a cigarette.

“I’ve got a bit of information I believe you should have,” the newspaper man continued.

“Begging pardon, I think you labor under natural delusion,” Chan said.

“Why - what do you mean?”

“I am not concerned with case,” Chan calmly informed him.

“You don’t mean to say -“

“In three hours I exit through Golden Gate.”

Rankin gasped. “Good lord. I knew you’d planned to go, of course, but I supposed. Why, man alive, this is the biggest thing that’s broke round here since the fire. Sir Frederic Bruce - it’s an international catastrophe.