"Charlie Chan - 7405 - The Temple Of The Golden Horde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN HORDE
by Robert Hart Davis

CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE, May 1974

The quiet pagoda in the secluded park near San Francisco promised rest and peace to everyone who entered its walls; for those who dared to learn its secrets it promised a cruel death...


I

A THIN FOG hung over the high iron gates of the isolated estate on Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco. The night was chill and silent, and for a long time nothing moved among the trees and dark, distant buildings behind the high fence. The only sound was the muffled churning of surf on rocks in the fog night.
Somewhere the faint chimes of a clock struck ten times through the mist, when a pick-up truck came out of the fog along the narrow dirt road and screeched to a halt outside the high iron gates. A small Chinese man jumped out. For a moment he stood there between the pick-up and the high gates as if not sure what to do next.
He wore baggy old corduroy pants, a denim shirt, a dark blue windbreaker, and worn, dirty sneakers. There was something vacant about his smooth Oriental face, almost the puzzled face of a child on the thin body of a man in his early thirties. He carried a brass-bound, dark-wood box about the size of a bowling ball bag but shaped like a small chest, and looked around apprehensively in the swirling mist.
Suddenly he seemed to hear something in the night, his head cocked like a nervous bird ready to fly. He blinked down at the small chest in his hands. Then he ran to a small side gate beside the high iron gates, unlocked the small gate with a key, went through and slammed it shut behind him.
Once more he stood and listened, smiling broadly as if all at once feeling happy, and began to walk up a curving gravel drive toward a large building some half a mile ahead inside the gate. He walked in quick, short steps - half-running with one leg almost dragging in a sideways movement like a hurrying crab.
The large building soon loomed up ahead in the foggy night. One of three buildings scattered some distance apart on the wooded grounds, it was nothing at all like the other two. Where they were ordinary, two-story yellow-stucco buildings in Spanish style, it was all dark wood and tile, with wooden pillars holding up an open porch that ran around all four sides, and a high red-lacquered roof like a curved pyramid with the corners turned up - a Chinese pagoda in the mist of the California shore.
Eagerly, the small Chinese man hurried toward the tall pagoda with his crab-like steps and stopped.
His child-like face was a mask of sheer terror.
He stumbled backwards in the gravel drive, still clutching the brass-bound wooden chest.
They seemed to rise up out of the ground, out of the fog itself, between the small Chinese man and the dark, eerie pagoda. Six shapes like shrouds in the mist, blending gray into the swirling night, faceless and silent, gliding soundlessly as if their feet did not touch the earth.
Six figures that emerged from the shadows of the trees and the pagoda like eyeless demons.
With a low, moaning cry. the small Chinese man turned and ran off into the foggy night toward where the trees thinned.
He ran wildly, in panic, not looking back. Into the fog, he fled blindly with the soundless demons pursuing him. As he reached the last trees, the fog thickened, and he ran stumbling over bare hummocks of thick grass. Twice he fell on the grass slick with the fog, and a new sound filled the night as he got up and ran on still clinging to the brass-bound box.
The sound of the sea on rocks.
A close sound growing louder.
The fleeing man stopped.
He looked behind him in fear - and ahead of him in terror.
The hooded figures ran closer behind, closing in from all sides. Ahead of where the small Chinese man stood shaking, the ocean broke an a rocky beach just below a low mound in the fog.
A surging, dark sea, and the small Chinese man's childlike face collapsed into something not human. The brass-bound chest slipped from his fingers and fell the few feet down to the rocks and sand below at the edge of the ocean.
Whimpering like some small, hopeless animal, the little Chinese man began to back away from the water. Then he turned, saw the six demonic shapes slowly encircling him closer and closer.
He stood as if paralyzed, only his mouth moving to emit the low, animal moans of fear.
The six hooded figures closed around him and he screamed.
A single scream that faded into the curling fog.


II

THE WINTER SUN broke through the morning fog of San Francisco just before noon, and streamed into the suite at The Mark Hopkins. The brightness was greeted by the songs of a pair of Peking nightingales hopping happily in their cylindrical cage hung from a stand near the windows.
"Ah," a portly Chinese gentleman said as he approached the cage of singing birds, "lucky is the man whose day begins with the song of small birds."
Dressed in an impeccable dark suit under a silk Chinese robe, Charlie Chan crooned to the birds, and fed them some choice seeds carried for that purpose. His pale ivory face smiled under his thin Chinese mustache, and his ample body had the fluid motion of a man without fat despite his portliness.
The ringing of his suite telephone interrupted his pleasant moment with his birds. Sighing, the famous detective answered the insistent instrument.
"Yes," he said, "this is Inspector Chan of the Honolulu Police... I am most grateful for your official welcome... I have no need of assistance. I will be at the afternoon meeting as arranged... Thank you."
Chan hung up with a faint smile at the eager public relations man's welcome of him. A smile that turned into a frown as the great detective reflected on the way the whole world was being run by public relations men who greeted a complete stranger like a long lost brother simply because he was an "important" person.
The International Penology Symposium he had come to San Francisco to attend was a serious gathering of criminology experts from across the world, but it would accomplish nothing if it was turned into a circus of "celebrities" such as himself. With a resigned sigh, Chan crossed the suite to a desk. He sat down and began to read through a thin manuscript of the speech he was scheduled to give at the first symposium this afternoon. He was to precede Prefect DeBevre of Paris.
Chan was still reading the speech half an hour later, when he heard the footsteps out in the hotel corridor.
With no outward signs, Chan came alert. The reflex awareness of every tiny change around him stemmed from his long years of police work, and was automatic by now. Without moving a hair, he listened.
The footsteps outside his suite were quick, yet tentative. They were the light steps of a woman who was unsure of herself, even nervous. Diffident, or else trying to be unheard as she moved closer to Chan's door. Chan did not hesitate.
Soundlessly, he stood and glided to the door. He listened almost without breathing, his dark, hooded eyes half closed. The footsteps came on, soft and light - and stopped at Chan's door.
Chan rested his hand on his pistol under his robe, and reached for the doorknob.