Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s Page 4

  The texts following are as they appeared in the first printing of the first book publication. The authors’ spelling and punctuation have been retained except in a few cases of obvious typographical errors. As discussed in context below, several of these texts were subsequently revised by editors to be more “politically correct.” These are presented here in their original form.

  L.S.K.

  Facsimile first-edition dust jacket for The House Without a Key.

  THE HOUSE

  WITHOUT A KEY1

  BY

  EARL DERR BIGGERS

  AUTHOR OF

  The Agony Column

  Seven Keys to Baldpate, etc.

  To my Mother and Father

  1.First published in Indianapolis by The Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1925. The publisher (and Biggers) apparently disliked The Saturday Evening Post illustrations of the serialized book, reproduced below, and Biggers asked Bobbs-Merrill to produce an illustrated cover rather than use the illustrations. This may have been in part the result of Biggers’s realization that Charlie Chan and not John Quincy Winterslip, who is depicted in most of the illustrations, was the real heart of the book. See Barbara Gregorich’s Charlie Chan’s Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers, p. 34.

  CHAPTER I

  Kona Weather

  Miss Minerva Winterslip was a Bostonian in good standing, and long past the romantic age. Yet beauty thrilled her still, even the semibarbaric beauty of a Pacific island. As she walked slowly along the beach she felt the little catch in her throat that sometimes she had known in Symphony Hall, Boston, when her favorite orchestra rose to some new and unexpected height of loveliness.

  It was the hour at which she liked Waikiki2 best, the hour just preceding dinner and the quick tropic darkness. The shadows cast by the tall cocoanut palms lengthened and deepened, the light of the falling sun flamed on Diamond Head3 and tinted with gold the rollers sweeping in from the coral reef. A few late swimmers, reluctant to depart, dotted those waters whose touch is like the caress of a lover. On the springboard of the nearest float a slim brown girl poised for one delectable instant. What a figure! Miss Minerva, well over fifty herself, felt a mild twinge of envy—youth, youth like an arrow, straight and sure and flying. Like an arrow the slender figure rose, then fell; the perfect dive, silent and clean.

  Miss Minerva glanced at the face of the man who walked beside her. But Amos Winterslip was oblivious to beauty; he had made that the first rule of his life. Born in the Islands, he had never known the mainland beyond San Francisco. Yet there could be no doubt about it, he was the New England conscience personified—the New England conscience in a white duck suit.

  “Better turn back, Amos,” suggested Miss Minerva. “Your dinner’s waiting. Thank you so much.”

  “I’ll walk as far as the fence,” he said. “When you get tired of Dan and his carryings-on, come to us again. We’ll be glad to have you.”

  “That’s kind of you,” she answered, in her sharp crisp way. “But I really must go home. Grace is worried about me. Of course, she can’t understand. And my conduct is scandalous, I admit. I came over to Honolulu for six weeks, and I’ve been wandering about these islands for ten months.”

  “As long as that?”

  She nodded. “I can’t explain it. Every day I make a solemn vow I’ll start packing my trunks—to-morrow.”

  “And to-morrow never comes,” said Amos. “You’ve been taken in by the tropics. Some people are.”

  “Weak people, I presume you mean,” snapped Miss Minerva. “Well, I’ve never been weak. Ask anybody on Beacon Street.”

  He smiled wanly. “It’s a strain in the Winterslips,” he said. “Supposed to be Puritans, but always sort of yearning toward the lazy latitudes.”

  “I know,” answered Miss Minerva, her eyes on that exotic shore line. “It’s what sent so many of them adventuring out of Salem harbor. Those who stayed behind felt that the travelers were seeing things no Winterslip should look at. But they envied them just the same—or maybe for that very reason.” She nodded. “A sort of gypsy strain. It’s what sent your father over here to set up as a whaler, and got you born so far from home. You know you don’t belong here, Amos. You should be living in Milton or Roxbury, carrying a little green bag and popping into a Boston office every morning.”

  “I’ve often thought it,” he admitted. “And who knows—I might have made something of my life—”

  They had come to a barbed-wire fence, an unaccustomed barrier on that friendly shore. It extended well down on to the beach; a wave rushed up and lapped the final post, then receded.

  Miss Minerva smiled. “Well, this is where Amos leaves off and Dan begins,” she said. “I’ll watch my chance and run around the end. Lucky you couldn’t build it so it moved with the tide.”

  “You’ll find your luggage in your room at Dan’s, I guess,” Amos told her. “Remember what I said about—” He broke off suddenly. A stocky, white-clad man had appeared in the garden beyond the barrier, and was moving rapidly toward them. Amos Winterslip stood rigid for a moment, an angry light flaming in his usually dull eyes. “Good-by,” he said, and turned.

  “Amos!” cried Miss Minerva sharply. He moved on, and she followed. “Amos, what nonsense! How long has it been since you spoke to Dan?”

  He paused under an algaroba tree.4 “Thirty-one years,” he said. “Thirtyone years the tenth of last August.”

  “That’s long enough,” she told him. “Now, come around that foolish fence of yours, and hold out your hand to him.”

  “Not me,” said Amos. “I guess you don’t know Dan, Minerva, and the sort of life he’s led. Time and again he’s dishonored us all—”

  “Why, Dan’s regarded as a big man,” she protested. “He’s respected—”

  “And rich,” added Amos bitterly. “And I’m poor. Yes, that’s the way it often goes in this world. But there’s a world to come, and over there I reckon Dan’s going to get his.”

  Hardy soul though she was, Miss Minerva was somewhat frightened by the look of hate on his thin face. She saw the uselessness of further argument. “Good-by, Amos,” she said. “I wish I might persuade you to come East some day—” He gave no sign of hearing, but hurried along the white stretch of sand.

  When Miss Minerva turned, Dan Winterslip was smiling at her from beyond the fence. “Hello, there,” he cried. “Come this side of the wire and enjoy life again. You’re mighty welcome.”

  “How are you, Dan?” She watched her chance with the waves and joined him. He took both her hands in his.

  “Glad to see you,” he said, and his eyes backed him up. Yes, he did have a way with women. “It’s a bit lonely at the old homestead these days. Need a young girl about to brighten things up.”

  Miss Minerva sniffed. “I’ve tramped Boston in galoshes too many winters,” she reminded him, “to lose my head over talk like that.”

  “Forget Boston,” he urged. “We’re all young in Hawaii. Look at me.”

  She did look at him, wonderingly. He was sixty-three, she knew, but only the mass of wavy white hair overhanging his temples betrayed his age. His face, burned to the deepest bronze by long years of wandering under the Polynesian sun, was without a line or wrinkle. Deep-chested and muscular, he could have passed on the mainland for a man of forty.

  “I see my precious brother brought you as far as the dead-line,” he remarked as they moved on through the garden. “Sent me his love, I presume?”

  “I tried to get him to come round and shake hands,” Miss Minerva said.

  Dan Winterslip laughed. “Don’t deprive poor Amos of his hate for me,” he urged. “It’s about all he lives for now. Comes over every night and stands under that algaroba tree of his, smoking cigarettes and staring at my house. Know what he’s waiting for? He’s waiting for the Lord to strike me down for my sins. Well, he’s a patient waiter, I’ll say that for him.”

  Miss Minerva did not reply. Dan’s great rambling house of many rooms was set in beauty almost too poi
gnant to be borne. She stood, drinking it all in again, the poinciana trees5 like big crimson umbrellas, the stately golden glow, the gigantic banyans6 casting purple shadows, her favorite hau tree,7 seemingly old as time itself, covered with a profusion of yellow blossoms. Loveliest of all were the flowering vines, the bougainvillea burying everything it touched in brick-red splendor. Miss Minerva wondered what her friends who every spring went into sedate ecstasies over the Boston Public Gardens would say if they could see what she saw now. They would be a bit shocked, perhaps, for this was too lurid to be quite respectable. A scarlet background—and a fitting one, no doubt, for Cousin Dan.

  They reached the door at the side of the house that led directly into the living-room. Glancing to her right, Miss Minerva caught through the lush foliage glimpses of the iron fence and tall gates that fronted on Kalia Road. Dan opened the door for her, and she stepped inside. Like most apartments of its sort in the Islands, the living-room was walled on but three sides, the fourth was a vast expanse of wire screening. They crossed the polished floor and entered the big hall beyond. Near the front door a Hawaiian woman of uncertain age rose slowly from her chair. She was a huge, high-breasted, dignified specimen of that vanishing race.8

  “Well, Kamaikui, I’m back,” Miss Minerva smiled.

  “I make you welcome,” the woman said. She was only a servant, but she spoke with the gracious manner of a hostess.

  “Same room you had when you first came over, Minerva,” Dan Winterslip announced.9 “Your luggage is there—and a bit of mail that came in on the boat this morning. I didn’t trouble to send it up to Amos’s. We dine when you’re ready.”

  “I’ll not keep you long,” she answered, and hurried up the stairs.

  Dan Winterslip strolled back to his living-room. He sat down in a rattan chair that had been made especially for him in Hong-Kong, and glanced complacently about at the many evidences of his prosperity. His butler entered, bearing a tray with cocktails.

  “Two, Haku?” smiled Winterslip. “The lady is from Boston.”10

  “Yes-s,” hissed Haku, and retired soundlessly.

  In a moment Miss Minerva came again into the room. She carried a letter in her hand, and she was laughing.

  “Dan, this is too absurd,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “I may have told you that they are getting worried about me at home. Because I haven’t been able to tear myself away from Honolulu, I mean. Well, they’re sending a policeman for me.”

  “A policeman?” He lifted his bushy eyebrows.

  “Yes, it amounts to that. It’s not being done openly, of course. Grace writes that John Quincy has six weeks vacation from the banking house, and has decided to make the trip out here. ‘It will give you some one to come home with, my dear,’ says Grace. Isn’t she subtle?”

  “John Quincy Winterslip? That would be Grace’s son.”

  Miss Minerva nodded. “You never met him, did you, Dan? Well, you will, shortly. And he certainly won’t approve of you.”

  “Why not?” Dan Winterslip bristled.

  “Because he’s proper. He’s a dear boy, but oh, so proper. This journey is going to be a great cross for him. He’ll start disapproving as he passes Albany, and think of the long weary miles of disapproval he’ll have to endure after that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s a Winterslip, isn’t he?”

  “He is. But the gypsy strain missed him completely. He’s a Puritan.”

  “Poor boy.” Dan Winterslip moved toward the tray on which stood the amber-colored drinks. “I suppose he’ll stop with Roger in San Francisco. Write him there and tell him I want him to make this house his home while he’s in Honolulu.”

  “That’s kind of you, Dan.”

  “Not at all. I like youth around me—even the Puritan brand. Now that you’re going to be apprehended and taken back to civilization, you’d better have one of these cocktails.”

  “Well,” said his guest, “I’m about to exhibit what my brother used to call true Harvard indifference.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Winterslip.

  “I don’t mind if I do,” twinkled Miss Minerva, lifting a cocktail glass.

  Dan Winterslip beamed upon her. “You’re a good sport, Minerva,” he remarked, as he escorted her across the hall.

  “When in Rome,” she answered, “I make it a point not to do as the Bostonians do. I fear it would prove a rather thorny path to popularity.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Besides, I shall be back in Boston soon. Tramping about to art exhibits and Lowell Lectures,11 and gradually congealing into senility.”

  But she was not in Boston now, she reflected, as she sat down at the gleaming table in the dining-room. Before her, properly iced, was a generous slice of papaia,12 golden yellow and inviting. Somewhere beyond the foliage outside the screens, the ocean murmured restlessly. The dinner would be perfect, she knew, the Island beef dry and stringy, perhaps, but the fruits and the salad more than atoning.

  “Do you expect Barbara soon?” she inquired presently.

  Dan Winterslip’s face lighted like the beach at sunrise. “Yes, Barbara has graduated. She’ll be along any day now. Nice if she and your perfect nephew should hit on the same boat.”

  “Nice for John Quincy, at any rate,” Miss Minerva replied. “We thought Barbara a lively, charming girl when she visited us in the East.”

  “She’s all of that,” he agreed proudly. His daughter was his dearest possession. “I tell you, I’ve missed her. I’ve been mighty lonesome.”

  Miss Minerva gave him a shrewd look. “Yes, I’ve heard rumors,” she remarked, “about how lonesome you’ve been.”

  He flushed under his tan. “Amos, I suppose?”

  “Oh, not only Amos. A great deal of talk, Dan. Really, at your age—”

  “What do you mean, my age? I told you we’re all young out here.” He ate in silence for a moment. “You’re a good sport—I said it and I meant it. You must understand that here in the Islands a man may behave a—a bit differently than he would in the Back Bay.”

  “At that,” she smiled, “all men in the Back Bay are not to be trusted. I’m not presuming to rebuke you, Dan. But—for Barbara’s sake—why not select as the object of your devotion a woman you could marry?”

  “I could marry this one—if we’re talking about the same woman.”

  “The one I refer to,” Miss Minerva replied, “is known, rather widely, as the Widow of Waikiki.”

  “This place is a hotbed of gossip. Arlene Compton is perfectly respectable.”

  “A former chorus girl I believe.”

  “Not precisely. An actress—small parts—before she married Lieutenant Compton.”

  “And a self-made widow.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?” he flared. His gray eyes glittered.

  “I understand that when her husband’s aeroplane crashed on Diamond Head, it was because he preferred it that way. She had driven him to it.”

  “Lies, all lies!” Dan Winterslip cried. “Pardon me, Minerva, but you mustn’t believe all you hear on the beach.” He was silent for a moment. “What would you say if I told you I proposed to marry this woman?”

  “I’m afraid I’d become rather bromidic,” she answered gently, “and remind you that there’s no fool like an old fool.” He did not speak. “Forgive me, Dan. I’m your first cousin, but a distant relative for all that. It’s really none of my business. I wouldn’t care—but I like you. And I’m thinking of Barbara—”

  He bowed his head. “I know,” he said, “Barbara. Well, there’s no need to get excited. I haven’t said anything to Arlene about marriage. Not yet.”

  Miss Minerva smiled. “You know, as I get on in years,” she remarked, “so many wise old saws begin to strike me as utter nonsense. Particularly that one I just quoted.” He looked at her, his eyes friendly again. “This is the best avocado I ever tasted,” she added. “But tell me, Dan, are you sure the mango is a food? Seems
more like a spring tonic to me.”

  By the time they finished dinner the topic of Arlene Compton was forgotten and Dan had completely regained his good nature. They had coffee on his veranda—or, in Island parlance, lanai—which opened off one end of the living-room. This was of generous size, screened on three sides and stretching far down on to the white beach. Outside the brief tropic dusk dimmed the bright colors of Waikiki.

  “No breeze stirring,” said Miss Minerva.

  “The trades have died,” Dan answered. He referred to the beneficent winds which—save at rare, uncomfortable intervals—blow across the Islands out of the cool northeast. “I’m afraid we’re in for a stretch of Kona weather.”13

  “I hope not,” Miss Minerva said.

  “It saps the life right out of me nowadays,” he told her, and sank into a chair. “That about being young, Minerva—it’s a little bluff I’m fond of.”

  She smiled gently. “Even youth finds the Kona hard to endure,” she comforted. “I remember when I was here before—in the ’eighties. I was only nineteen, but the memory of the sick wind lingers still.”

  “I missed you then, Minerva.”

  “Yes. You were off somewhere in the South Seas.”

  “But I heard about you when I came back. That you were tall and blonde and lovely, and nowhere near so prim as they feared you were going to be. A wonderful figure, they said—but you’ve got that yet.”

  She flushed, but smiled still. “Hush, Dan. We don’t talk that way where I come from.”

  “The ’eighties,” he sighed. “Hawaii was Hawaii then. Unspoiled, a land of opera bouffe, with old Kalakaua14 sitting on his golden throne.”

  “I remember him,” Miss Minerva said. “Grand parties at the palace. And the afternoons when he sat with his disreputable friends on the royal lanai, and the Royal Hawaiian Band played at his feet, and he haughtily tossed them royal pennies. It was such a colorful, naive spot then, Dan.”

  “It’s been ruined,” he complained sadly. “Too much aping of the mainland. Too much of your damned mechanical civilization—automobiles, phonographs, radios—bah! And yet—and yet, Minerva—away down underneath there are deep dark waters flowing still.”