Evening Star Newspaper, October 4, 1936, Page 87

w October 4, 1936 THE STORY SO FAR night before their ship was due in Tahiti, Lynn Downey and Tracy Burke, chatting after midnight at the railing, “ were startled by a woman’s screams and # sounds of a struggle on the boat deck above. dagger flashed past them into the ocean, a sheet of note paper, with Chinese char- 8, fluttered down and whipped against a Burke rushed to the boat deck, in a fruit- search. Lynn soon joined him, and re- orted that the paper had blown out to sea. hat night they found that their cabins had in ransacked; in Lynn’s an international that which had fluttered down from the pat deck. | After considerable questioning Lynn Down- and Burke were allowed to land in Tabhiti, were soon ordered to leave. When they liled for San Francisco, tagging along were Roscoe Browning, a collector of primitive 1s; the Island beauty, Wanda Hara; Vin- Gary and Alton Clegg. . Burke was bewildered. He could not be- Beve the explanation, volunteered by Clegg, £ithat the sheet of note paper contained secrets o " interested in it, were dangerous, free lance f international importance and that those spies. He asked Clegg, a little suspiciously: “Why do you tell me all this?” “To save your life!” Clegg asserted. ‘““The others are all going to gang up on you and make you their goat.” Burke would not take this warning serious- ly. Was he unwise? THIS WEEK *HOLD IT, YOUI" CRIED TRACY. “ALL | WANT IS TO GET TO THE STREET” ]éé’/% of the JRAGOT Tracy Burke hears a woman scream — the second time. In this instaliment a new serial of adventure and murder reaches a climax in San Francisco’s Chinatown by ERLE STANLEY GARDNER PART IV LTON CLEGG represented Burke’s only success, so far as the extraction of any definite information was con- cerned. Lynn Downey scrupulously avoided him. Roscoe Browning would doubt- less have been willing to talk, had he not been almost constantly in the company of Lynn Downey. Regardless of his ultimate objective, his technique was that of a man wooing an attractive young woman. Burke strongly suspected Wanda Hara of having tipped the table steward, because he was placed at her table. Nor was Burke great- ly surprised when, on the second day, the steward, with profuse apologies, announced that, due to a transfer of waiters, they were temporarily short-handed, and for a few meals, at least, it would be necessary to add one other person to the table. Wanda Hara was plainly irritated, particu- larly when it turned out that Alton Clegg was the passenger who was to join the table. But, after a few moments of bright-eyed anger, she apparently decided to make the best of the situation, and favored Clegg with one of her best smiles. “‘So nice to have you here,” she said. “It seems as though we’re all old friends.” And Clegg remarked, with a brazen attempt at wide-eyed innocence, “Yes. That’s prob- ably why the steward decided to put the three of ug together. He thought we would have, perhaps, something in common. I must really commend him upon his perspicacity. It's go- ing to make the voyage more pleasant for both of us, eh, Burke?” Burke bowed at Wanda Hara. “I haven’t Clegg's ability to turn neat phrases,” he s=:_, “but you know how I feel.’ ~~ She let her smoky eyes rest upon him and said, “After all, phrases don’t count with my race. It’s sincerity.” “\Oh. 1 say,” Clegg protested, “‘surely you Illustration by Manshall Frantx wouldn’t accuse me of any lack of sincerity in expressing my pleasure in being allowed to dine in your company?”’ Her dusky eyes seemed suddenly veiled as she flashed perfect white teeth from beneath red lips in a smile at Clegg. “No, my dear Monsieur Clegg, I accept your statement at its face value — that you are overjoyed at having joined our table. Now does that satis- fYYGI?" He smilingly acknowledged the thrust and said politely, ““Quite. By the way, Miss Hara, if it isn’t a personal question and since you have mentioned it yourself, just what is your race?” She laughed throatily and said proudly, “I come from the Islands.” : ““You mean you are a Polynesian?” “No,” she said, “I come from the greatest melting pot in the world — Hawaii.”” Her eyes suddenly glowed with feeling. Her voice became vibrant with emotion, as she said, “I’'m half Hawaiian, a quarter Samoan, and the other quarter of my blood is a mixture of the Oriental races. Don’t be too certain that you who pride yourselves upon your Anglo- Saxon ancestry are the aristocrats of the world. You have intolerance, rapidly growing national nervousness, a selfishness, a phi- losophy which is labeled Christianity, but which is, in reality, a dollar worship. ‘““You have achieved economic domination of the island races. You have contaminated my ancestors with the diseases of civilization. But we are fighting our way through. We're doing it by taking advantage of our environ- ment. You have made our lands a melting pot. It is here the tides of the East and the West meet. We have drawn the best from the East, as well as the West, and have combined (Continved on page 10)