The House Without a Key

CHARLIE CHAN BOOK 1: Romance, love, beauty mingle with the sound of the breakers on the beach of Waikiki.

It is no place for murder. Yet in a spot of exquisite beauty Dan Winterslip, the genial old reprobate, is stabbed to death. And Honolulu buzzes with gossip of the deep secrets of his past and the scarlet tales of his youth, cropping up now like black ghosts to point mysterious fingers at his murderer.

The murderer of Dan Winterslip wore a wrist-watch whose illuminated face lacked a figure two.

This much Dan's spinster cousin from Boston saw when she returned late from a native festival.

In the black living-room she saw the gleaming dial of the watch, she felt the eyes of a person following her.

With the bearing of those aristocratic beings of Beacon Street and with her best Boston Symphony concert manner, she nerved herself to pass through the room.

Out of hearing, she calls the servants. There is commotion, lights, and--Dan, lying motionless.

In the morning come a score of clues, baffling stories, threads of intrigue, unknown paths to the past, leading through the intricacies of a superb story.

So the fat Chinese detective, the best in Honolulu, had plenty to go on.

With his flivver and his amazing use of the English language he'd take a clue and run it ragged--ragged or right down to the man who slipped that moonless night into the house without a key.