XIV
WAH LEE AND THE FLOWER OF HEAVEN
"Yes, there's quite a story attached to that," remarked Bill Quinn one evening as the conversation first lagged and then drifted away into silence. We were seated in his den at the time—the "library" which he had ornamented with relics of a score or more of cases in which the various governmental detective services had distinguished themselves—and I came to with a start.
"What?" I exclaimed. "Story in what?"
"In that hatchet—the one on the wall there that you were speculating about. It didn't take a psychological sleuth to follow your eyes and read the look of speculation in them. That's a trick that a 'sparrow cop' could pull!"
"Well, then, suppose you pay the penalty for your wisdom—and spin the yarn," I retorted, none the less glad of the opportunity to hear the facts behind the sinister red stain which appeared on the blade of the Chinese weapon, for I knew that Quinn could give them to me if he wished.
"Frankly, I don't know the full history of the hatchet," came the answer from the other side of the fireplace. "Possibly it goes back to the Ming dynasty—whenever that was—or possibly it was purchased from a mail-order house in Chicago. Chop suey isn't the only Chinese article made in this country, you know. But my interest in it commenced with the night when Ezra Marks—
"However, let's start at the beginning."
Marks [continued the former operative] was, as you probably recall, one of the best men ever connected with the Customs Service. It was he who solved the biggest diamond-smuggling case on record, and he was also responsible for the discovery of the manner in which thirty thousand yards of very valuable silk was being run into the country every year without visiting the custom office. That's a piece of the silk up there, over the picture of Mrs. Armitage....