"Charlie Chan - 7311 - Walk Softly Strangler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

"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 Massacre."
"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 passed 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 - damn you, you've got me talking your pidgin!"
Chan masked a smile of amusement, 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 damnable 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 Nazimova'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 Goddan 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 passage 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 pagoda-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 assent, 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 passage that ran the east-west length of the building, staircase and elevator faced one another. The plump, hennaed lady pushed the lift button 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 button 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 passenger 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 passed 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...