Complete Works of Earl Derr Biggers Read online

  The Complete Works of

  EARL DERR BIGGERS

  (1884-1933)

  Contents

  The Charlie Chan Series

  The House without a Key (1925)

  The Chinese Parrot (1926)

  Behind That Curtain (1928)

  The Black Camel (1929)

  Charlie Chan Carries On (1930)

  Keeper of the Keys (1932)

  Other Novels

  Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913)

  Love Insurance (1914)

  Inside the Lines (1915)

  The Agony Column (1916)

  Fifty Candles (1921)

  The Short Stories

  Earl Derr Biggers Tells Ten Stories (1933)

  Uncollected Stories

  The Poetry

  Miscellaneous Verses

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2019

  Version 1

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  The Complete Works of

  EARL DERR BIGGERS

  with introductions by Ian Dickerson

  www.lesliecharteris.com

  By Delphi Classics, 2019

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Earl Derr Biggers

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2019.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78877 977 7

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

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  The Charlie Chan Series

  Warren, a city in Trumbull County, Ohio — Biggers’ birthplace

  Biggers as a young man

  The House without a Key (1925)

  A first draft of this novel, the first to feature Charlie Chan, was completed in September 1924. It was initially titled Moonlight at the Crossroads, but shortly before it was to follow the standard route of being serialised in the Saturday Evening Post, Biggers and his publishers agreed to retitle it The House without a Key.

  The story was a huge success — the first instalment ran on 24 January 1925 — but Charlie Chan was not the focal point; indeed, he appears roughly a quarter of the way through. As far as Biggers was concerned it was a romantic mystery with the protagonist being John Quincy Winterslip, who has travelled to Hawaii to find who killed his Aunt Minerva.

  Biggers later expanded on the origin of the title; one night during his visit to Hawaii in April 1920 he and his wife were going out for the evening and asked their host, “What time do you lock up?” She replied “We don’t lock up Mr. Biggers. That front door is never locked.” And she went on to tell him that as far as she knew the front door never had a key.

  The Los Angeles Times, amongst many other newspapers, loved the novel:

  “A swift-running narrative in which rollicking fun, glowing humor and now and then a bit of sly irony are delightfully compounded with murder and mystery and intrigue and romance. The humor is not of the broad variety, but is that subtle quality that results when the cold, stiff and formal culture of chilly Boston contacts with the free and easy modes of life in the lazy latitudes of Honolulu… This is one of the most fascinating mystery stories of the year…There is not a dull page in the book. The mystery remains a mystery to the last.”

  It was adapted for film in 1926 — the first of forty-seven Charlie Chan movies — and again as Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case in 1933.

  Chang Apana (1871-1933) was a Chinese-Hawaiian member of the Honolulu Police Department, first as an officer, then as a detective. He was the inspiration for Biggers’ fictional Asian detective Charlie Chan.

  The magazine in which the novel was serialised

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The first edition

  The 1933 film adaptation, starring Warner Oland as Charlie Chan

  TO

  MY MOTHER

  AND FATHER

  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 semi-barbaric 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 Waikiki 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 Head 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 h
ome. 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. “Thirty-one years,” he said. “Thirty-one 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 poignant to be borne. She stood, drinking it all in again, the poinciana trees like big crimson umbrellas, the stately golden glow, the gigantic banyans casting purple shadows, her favorite hau tree, 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.

  “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. “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.”

  “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 were 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 all 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, 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, 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.