10-Story Detective, March 1941 — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 : quoted in Chinese. “Do not try to press that button which will warn those inside, Sam. You remember the time that I saved you from a murder charge? You remember how fast my shooting was then? I can still shoot, Sam.” He spoke very softly, but Sam Mee stopped the motion of his hand, brought both hands to the top of the counter. “I remember,’ he answered, “the service you did me, thereby placing the whole Kung Tong in your debt. But this is a matter that is deeper than the life of any of us. My brother has told me about your visit to the tong house, how you chose to take the other side. He thought you were killed there, but he was in error. “Now that you are still alive, I beg of you, do not go behind the rear par- tition tonight, for you will exhaust the patience of the gods. It will surely mean your death, and I will be sad.” Gil wagged his head from side to side. “Sorry, Sam, but I got to see this through.” ; He walked sideways toward the rear of the store, keeping an eye on all three of them. At the rear wall he felt around with his hand until he found a button. He pressed it, and a section of the rear wall slid open. He stepped through, and the sliding door closed behind him. Gil was in a lighted, bare room. A wiry yellow man sat before a closed door at the far end. The yel- low man snarled. His hands moved like lightning, and a knife came hurtling through the air. But Gil was already on his knees. The knife im- bedded itself in the closed panel, and the Chinaman reached for a gun. Gil flashed his own out of its hol- ster, covered the other. The China- man froze, hand inside of his shirt. Gil said in the other’s tongue: “You are not ready to go to meet your ancestors yet. Do not draw that weapon.” ) His words were convincing enough, for the Chinaman took his 10-STORY DETECTIVE hand slowly out of his shirt, raised it and the other in the air. Gil came up close to him, said in English: “It hurts me to do this, brother, but you know how it is!” His left fist crashed against the China- man’s chin and the hatchet-man went down in a heap with a muted groan. Gil gripped hard on the knob of the door the hatchet-man had been guarding, and turned it slowly. Then he pulled it toward him very gently. The door opened. Through the slight crack thus made, Gil could see a room luxuri- ously furnished in oriental style. But he could only get a view of a small portion of it. He saw a black-garbed. yellow man stooping intently over something that might have been a table. Then he heard a smothered cry of agony. He tore the door wide open, stepped in, gun at his hip. HERE was a table in the center + of the room. Wayne, stripped to the waist, was strapped to the table. Charle Mee was standing close by, regarding the proceedings with a benign expression. The black-garbed hatchet-man, Gil now saw, was one of three around the table. He was holding a strange sort of thing that looked like a pin cush- ion with the pins reversed, the points sticking outward. The cushion was attached to a bamboo handle. Just as Gil stepped into the room, the hatchet-man had finished sweep- ing it down across Wayne’s naked chest in a raking blow that caused the pins to scrape bloody furrows in the jade collector’s body. There was a bandage over Wayne’s eyes, and he strained against his bonds in agony. Gil said nothing, just swung his gun in an arc to cover the four yel- low men. One of the black-clothed ones made a motion to go for a gun. But Charlie Mee, with a movement that was surprisingly swift for so fat a man, put a hand on his arm. Comic riook CO