“Precisely,” agreed Sir Frederic. “The human element—that is what counts. I have had no luck with scientific devices. Take the dictaphone—it has been a complete washout at the Yard.” He talked on, while the luncheon progressed. Finally he turned to Chan. “And what have your methods gained you, Sergeant? You have been successful, I hear.”
Chan shrugged. “Luck—always happy luck.”
“You’re too modest,” said Rankin. “That won’t get you anywhere.”
“The question now arises—where do I want to go?”
“But surely you’re ambitious?” Miss Morrow suggested.
Chan turned to her gravely. “Coarse food to eat, water to drink, and the bended arm for a pillow—that is an old definition of happiness in my country. What is ambition? A canker that eats at the heart of the white man, denying him the joys of contentment. Is it also attacking the heart of white woman? I hope not.” The girl looked away. “I fear I am victim of crude philosophy from Orient. Man—what is he? Merely one link in a great chain binding the past with the future. All times I remember I am link. Unsignificant link joining those ancestors whose bones repose on far distant hillsides with the ten children—it may now be eleven—in my house on Punchbowl Hill.”
“A comforting creed,” Barry Kirk commented.
“So, waiting the end, I do my duty as it rises. I tread the path that opens.” He turned to Sir Frederic. “On one point, from my reading, I am curious. In your work at Scotland Yard, you follow only one clue. What you call the essential clue.”
Sir Frederic nodded. “Such is usually our custom. When we fail, our critics ascribe it to that. They say, for example, that our obsession over the essential clue is the reason why we never solved the famous Ely Place murder.”
They all sat up with interest. Bill Rankin beamed. Now things were getting somewhere. “I’m afraid we never heard of the Ely Place murder, Sir Frederic,” he hinted.
“I sincerely wish I never had,” the Englishman replied. “It was the first serious case that came to me when I took charge of the C.I.D. over sixteen years ago. I am chagrined to say I have never been able to fathom it.”
He finished his salad, and pushed away the plate. “Since I have gone so far, I perceive I must go farther. Hilary Galt was the senior partner in the firm of Pennock and Galt, solicitors, with offices in Ely Place, Holborn. The business this firm carried on for more than a generation was unique of its kind. Troubled people in the highest ranks of society went to them for shrewd professional advice and Mr. Hilary Galt and his father-in-law, Pennock, who died some twenty years ago, were entrusted with more numerous and romantic secrets than any other firm of solicitors in London. They knew the hidden history of every rascal in Europe, and they rescued many persons from the clutches of blackmailers. It was their boast that they never kept records of any sort.”
Dessert was brought, and after this interruption, Sir Frederic continued.
“One foggy January night sixteen years ago, a caretaker entered Mr. Hilary Galt’s private office, presumably deserted for the day. The gas lights were ablaze, the windows shut and locked; there was no sign of any disturbance. But on the floor lay Hilary Galt, with a bullet in his brain.
“There was just one clue, and over that we puzzled for many weary months at the Yard. Hilary Galt was a meticulous dresser, his attire was perfect, always. It was perfect on this occasion—with one striking exception. His highly polished boots—I presume you call them shoes over here—were removed and standing on a pile of papers on top of his desk. And on his feet he wore a pair of velvet slippers, embellished with a curious design.
“These, of course, seemed to the Yard the essential clue, and we set to work. We traced those slippers to the Chinese Legation in Portland Place. Mr. Galt had been of some trifling service to the Chinese minister, and early on the day of his murder the slippers had arrived as a gift from that gentleman. Galt had shown them to his office staff, and they were last seen wrapped loosely in their covering near his hat and stick. That was as far as we got.
“For sixteen years I have puzzled over those slippers. Why did Mr. Hilary Galt remove his boots, don the slippers, and prepare himself as though for some extraordinary adventure? I don’t know to this day. The slippers still haunt me. When I resigned from the Yard, I rescued them from the Black Museum and took them with me as a souvenir of my first case—an unhappy souvenir of failure. I should like to show them to you, Miss Morrow.”
“Thrilling,” said the girl.
“Annoying,” corrected Sir Frederic grimly.
Bill Rankin looked at Charlie Chan. “What’s your reaction to that case, Sergeant?” he inquired.
Chan’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Humbly begging pardon to inquire,” he said, “have you the custom, Sir Frederic, to put yourself in place of murderer?”
“It’s a good idea,” the Englishman answered, “if you can do it. You mean—”
“A man who has killed—a very clever man—he knows that Scotland Yard has fiercely fixed idea about essential clue. His wits accompany him. He furnishes gladly one essential clue which has no meaning and leads no place at all.”
Sir Frederic regarded him keenly. “Excellent,” he remarked. “And it has one great virtue—from your point of view. It completely exonerates your countrymen at the Chinese Legation.”
“It might do more than that,” suggested Barry Kirk.
Sir Frederic thoughtfully ate his dessert. No one spoke for some moments. But Bill Rankin was eager for more material.
“A very interesting case, Sir Frederic,” he remarked. “You must have a lot like it up your sleeve. Murders that ended more successfully for Scotland Yard—”
“Hundreds,” nodded the detective. “But none that still holds its interest for me like the crime in Ely Place. As a matter of fact, I have never found murder so fascinating as some
