"Charlie Chan - 7402 - The SIlent Corpse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

When they returned to the others, Lenore Burdon Wilmot took Charlie Chan in charge again, offering him a highball which was gladly accepted. When they were seated, away from the others, she said, "Well, dear Charles, what do you think?"
"Too early for think," he replied. "Still seeking cause of uncle's suicide."
Lenore wrinkled her charming nose, shrugged equally charming shoulders. Her grey green eyes flashed fire and she said, "Who knows why he did it? Who knows why anyone does away with himself? I'm worried about Harriet. Disappearing this way simply isn't like her."
Chan agreed but had no desire to get off on that angle again just then. For the moment, his attention and interest were focused on Armand Kent.
"Passing curiosity, Lenore" he said, "but where did young Armand pick up Mandarin Chinese?"
Lenore spread her hands and her eyes lit up with a glow of pride. She said, "Armand picks up languages the way other boys his age pick up girls - not that he doesn't get his share of those, too. You must have noticed that Carol is - what do they call it? - simply bananas over him."
"I'm not quite sure who he is," said Chan, "or how he fits into the family pattern."
Lenore's lovely brow furrowed as she thought it over, sighed, then said, "Oh, dear! It's all so complicated."
"Try to unravel, please," said the detective.
"Well... You see, Charlie, in a family like this, sometimes things get awfully complex. Thanks to all the money, every Burdon is a target. And sometimes - no, that makes it sound worse than it is - or was."
She paused. Chan waited. Then she said, "When Ellen Burdon, that's Lowell's wife, was a girl, she went to school in Versailles, a very select boarding school for wealthy American girls and a few English. There, she met a handsome young Air Force major and eloped with him. There was hell to pay. He was half-French and wild as a hawk, nobody is really sure whether they were married or not. The result was Armand. Major Kent died in a crash just before he was born.
"So, when Lowell married Ellen, Armand sort of came with her. Not right away, of course. He visited here as a boy, and everyone liked him, even if he inherited his father's wild streak. Then, about five years ago, he seemed to get serious. Charlie, he's an absolute genius. He excels everybody else at everything he tackles - languages, finances, mathematics, sports. He has a tremendous drive to succeed."
Chan nodded. This was entirely in line with his own observations and deductions where Armand Kent was concerned. He said, "But he's not really a Burdon then, except in a second hand way."
"But he will be one." Lenore spoke with absolute conviction. "He won't be the first the clan has adopted. Like all big families, to survive there must be a constant inflow of fresh blood and talent. After he marries Carol..."
She shrugged, let it hang. Chan decided to change the subject. "Is there some sort of guide to this house available?" he asked. "If I'm to remain here a day or two, I'd very much like to avoid repeating the shooting gallery duck experience."
"Poor Charlie!" Lenore put down her empty highball glass on the coffee table between them, rose, said, "Uncle Lionel had an album made up when he rebuilt the Point. I'll see if I can find it."
While she was away, Chan considered what Lenore had told him. Most curious of all was Lenore's attitude toward her mother. She referred to Ellen Burdon amiably enough, but he sensed no normal filial attachmeet. Then, the chronology was cockeyed. If Ellen had had a schoolgirl romance in Versailles, of which Armand was the result, it would mean the boy had to be older than Lenore - which he obviously was not by quite a few years.
He thought back to the kidnapping-ransom problem he had solved nine years before, to the girl's return to the collective bosom of her family. In this instance, the welcome had come from Harriet. It was she who had played the parental role rather than the girl's real mother.
It failed to make sense - save under one set of conditions. When Lenore came back in triumph, the album pressed to her attractive bosom, the detective said, "Lenore, unless you've been putting me on, Ellen is not your mother."
"I thought you knew about that," Lenore sounded astonished. "I simply took it for granted. My real mother was drowned in a sailing accident right off the Point when I was still using a pacifier. Lowell married Ellen years later. I love Ellen even if - well, never mind. Anyway, I was too old to need a mother little girl-wise."
A pause - Chan was growing used to them - and then, offering him the album, "Here it is, dear Inspector Chan. It's the only one left. The others were given as family Christmas presents and things. Oh, dear, you'll have to excuse me. With Harriet gone and all these people here, there are a million things to do. Willis will get you another drink."
"Thanks, but I'll do without," said Chan, rising. "I think I'll go to my room now if nobody minds. It has been a tiring day."
"Sleep well," Lenore replied. "If you get lost, the album will show you the way."
A pair of crimson and white striped silk pajamas lay neatly folded on the opened bed, whose snowy white linen sheets and big pillows looked deliciously inviting. There was another robe, this one of brocaded silk with a plaited and tasseled cord beside the pajamas and red morocco slippers on the carpet beside the bed. Save for a dark belt of dampness along the window seat side of the carpet there was little evidence inside the room of the raging storm without.
Not that it had abated. The wind continued its howling, the surf its pounding rhythmic roar - while the rain struck the storm shutters like some giant devil's drummer. But within the room's shelter, all was warm and dry and softly lit and comfortable. Although the clock was still shy of midnight by half an hour, Charlie Chan decided to retire. His eyes felt heavily sanded and his muscles relaxed without trace of any of his earlier tensions.
When he removed his suit and hung it up neatly in the huge wardrobe closet it so scantily occupied, Chan saw that his own linen had been laundered, dried, pressed and returned on hangers. He paused to admire the perfect domestic organization of Burdon Point, far exceeding that of any of Honolulu's costly resort hotels.
This reminded him of the missing Harriet MacLean once more. He wondered where she was, and why. Then he went to the bathroom, eschewed a second tub lest he fall asleep in the warm water and emerge wrinkled like a prune. He reviewed the events of the day as he brushed his teeth, and came to with a jerk so violently that a trickle of toothpaste ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin.
Wiping himself hastily, he returned to the bedroom closet, re-examined the returned shirt on its hanger. It had been beautifully pressed save for one thing - the pocket over the left breast hung forward a full half inch. Chan considered this minuscular discrepancy in the perfection of Burdon Point domestic service.
He decided it unlikely that the wielder of the iron had neglected such an obvious portion of the garment. Also unlikely, he thought, was that whoever returned it from the laundry to the closet had allowed it to slide off its hanger.
Eyes narrowed, he considered the only other implication possible - that someone had searched his room since the laundry was returned...
On the face of it, this, too, seemed implausible. For one thing, he had brought virtually nothing with him save the clothes he was wearing. Along with keys, wallet, small change, handkerchief and the usual impediments of the male animal on a supposed one-day trip, Furthermore, all these save the handkerchief, which had been laundered, had been on his person all evening.
He found it difficult to concentrate long on the problem - or on any problem - as the sleepiness returned to embrace him. He felt as if someone had slipped him a barbiturate.
With heavy lids, Chan examined the hall door. It had a knob button lock, but one which could be opened by a key from the outside. He forced himself to remain awake while he pondered the suddenly titanic problem of whether to lock it or not. Since it appeared ineffective for keeping out any determined night visitors who might pass that way, he decided to leave it unlocked.
There were reasons, two of them, both valid. One - such a gesture would indicate his confidence that his hosts and fellow guests would leave his room undisturbed white he slept. Two - if any of them violated his privacy, even if their presence failed to rouse him from his slumber, he felt certain they must leave traces he could detect in the morning.
Chan made a last effort to rally, in order to study the album Lenore had loaned him, but found it impossible. The hitherto alarming sounds of the tropical storm raging just beyond the thin barrier of the shutters was suddenly as soothing as a mother's lullaby to a small child. Before he could turn off the lamp, he was fast asleep...
He awakened quickly, evidently spurred by his subconscious. At first, he thought it was morning, complete with unlikely sunlight. But then he discovered that the "sunlight" was the glow of the bedside lamp in its parchment shade. He lifted his wristwatch from the table and saw that it was twelve minutes past twelve. He had been asleep less than twenty-five minutes.
What had awakened him? For a moment it danced just out of reach, and then he remembered. Evidently his brain had not been switched off with the rest of him, because he knew with almost psychic intensity what his unseen visitor had been seeking.
He opened the drawer of the night table and drew out his wallet, which had not been tampered with. Then, from one of its lesser folds, behind a small cluster of bank deposit receipts, he found and drew forth the small scrap of cloth he had taken from the window crack the afternoon before. It was no longer wet, of course, but Chan did not think that would matter
Rising silently, the detective padded across the big bedroom, flinching as his bare feet came in contact with the still wet and clammy edge of the carpet. Being very careful, he unfastened the lock with difficulty, causing a sudden amplification of the hurricane thunder without. After placing the bit of flowered black fabric in the edge on the same side that he had first noticed it, he brought the window down, shutting out the fury beyond the shutters or at least cutting its volume in half.
If something drastic had happened to Harriet Burdon MacLean, its removal now would indicate the fact to Chan. If not, he had been rearing a house of cards. In any event, if something had happened to Harriet, the cloth would hardly offer evidence that would stand up in any court. What was truly important was that he find out whether anyone were after the seemingly innocent scrap.
Again he dozed off, this time with a sense of having accompanied something at least potentially worth while.
When Chan awoke again, the lamp was still on and the hands of his wristwatch pointed to five forty-five. If he had been given a barbiturate, and he was by no means sure of this, its effects had totally worn off. He felt both fully awake and refreshed.
What had awakened him, he decided, was the silence. It lay all about, like cotton batting that filled the world. The storm sounds had not merely subsided to a whisper, they had subsided altogether.
Chan knew what this meant via long experience. The tranquil eye of the hurricane was overhead, lulling all unsuspecting souls into belief that the big storm was over. In fact, of course, the worst was yet to come, as the rear edge of such a rotating storm is invariably fiercer than its vanguard assault.
Chan then got out of bed and went back to the window and opened it.
The bit of tom fabric with the floral pattern was gone!
Having already considered the possible significance of such an occurrence, Chan wasted little time over it now. Instead, he opened the storm shutters, which responded easily and silently to his touch in the absence of heavy wind pressure. The pale ashes of night still lingered in the bowl of the western sky and the dawn was cut off from the east by the massive lump of Mauna Lao.
Although the moon had long gone about its business, a thin scattering of stars remained faintly visible in the deceptively dark blue heavens. Chan found himself seemingly overlooking a glossy, slowly turbulent sea as if from the top of a cliff. Looking straight down, beyond a narrow ledge that apparently served as a rain gutter, he could see only the lazy lift of the slow seas that broke in frothing foam beneath the range of his vision.
Ordinarily, he knew, the sky would be dancing with gulls seeking prey on the water beneath and uttering their raucous cries. This morning, not a bird was in sight or sound. Countless generations of precarious existence had rendered them wiser than many humans to the ways of a tropical storm. They would not venture forth until its last angry shreds had passed onward to the northeast.
A stir of sound close at hand, immediately to his left, caught his attention. A bony hand clutched from beneath at the outer lip of the ledge just under the window, and as he watched another hand appeared.