The Drowned Albatross wasn’t much of a ship. It was filled with sullen Slavs who didn’t have no interest in games of chance, didn’t talk much about women, had as little use for the Good Book as for Das Kapital, and mostly concentrated on being silent and swarthy.

I’d hitched a ride after taking my leave of Easter Island, though it wasn’t until the ship finally docked that I found out where I’d hitched a ride to. I was standing on deck, looking for any color besides blue, when this here island finally hove into view, and the closer we got the bigger it looked. What looked best of all was half a dozen of the local ladies standing on a pier, wearing cute little grass skirts, and doing a welcoming dance. It was when I saw a bunch of guys in American military uniforms wandering around the area that I realized that we were either in San Francisco or Hawaii, and I hoped it was the latter because if San Francisco hadn’t broken off from the mainland and set off on a voyage across the Pacific it was still part of the U. S. of A. and that meant my presence wasn’t welcome there. (I think their exact words when I departed from the other coast were “If we ever see you on this continent again, we’ll tar and feather you, hang you from the highest tree, set fire to you, and chop up what’s left of you as fishbait,” which between you and me is no way for three governors, a mayor, and a United States Senator to talk in public.)

I heard a bunch of guitars playing island-type music, and then I saw the “Welcome to Honolulu” banners, so I knew we weren’t in San Francisco, but I didn’t know we were in Hawaii either until I clambered down the gangplank and one of the dancin’ girls guv me a big hug and told me I was welcome to it. When I told her I thunk I was in Honolulu she just kind of stared at me and then explained that the two weren’t necessarily incompatible and that in fact one of them was the other one’s capital, though I forget which was which.

Didn’t make no difference anyhow, as long as I was finally off that ship. I figgered I’d hunt up some lodging for the night, maybe an elegant suite at the Ritz or whatever rivaled it in Honolulu, and you can imagine my disappointment when I found out that they wouldn’t take an IOU, even from a God-fearing man of the cloth like myself. I wandered around a bit, found a hot craps game going on in a back alley–I’d been on five continents, and I had yet to see a front alley–and I thought I’d see if I could run my dollar and fifty-three cents up to something a little more substantial. When it was my turn to hit my point I blew on my dice and said a prayer, and the Lord clearly blessed ‘em, or He had at least blessed the guy what weighted them for me back in Europe, and before you knew it I was up thirty dollars. Then, before anyone could ask to examine the dice, the police broke up the game, everyone departed, and when I was the last one there I tipped the cops five dollars, just like I had promised to do.

I now had enough for a room, which didn’t cost near that much back in 1939, which is when this particular spellbinding tale took place, but even though we were surrounded by water on all four sides, or however many sides an island has got, I found that thirst won out over Morpheus, and I moseyed down to the waterfront in search of a little drinking stuff and maybe the companionship of an obliging lady of quality.

I finally came to a tavern called Bruno’s, which didn’t seem no better nor worse than the dozen others surrounding it, but I heard some high-pitched feminine laughter coming from within, and since I hadn’t spoke to a woman in more than a month–mighty few of ‘em tend to travel solo on Slavic cargo ships–I walked in and looked around for a table, with or without a woman attached to it.

As it turned out, there weren’t no women that weren’t otherwise occupied, and the same could be said for the tables, but I did spot one empty chair and wandered over to it.

“Mind if I sit here?” I said, plumping myself down before anyone at the table could tell me that they did mind.

“Have a seat,” said one of the guys, who were all sporting thick mustaches, which meant they weren’t off-duty army or navy officers.

“Thanks,” I said. “I reckon I will.”

“You look like you’ve come a far way,” he said. Before I could allow that indeed I had, he finished his sentence: “Without benefit of soap, a razor, or fresh clothes.”

“These here duds have held up pretty well, all things considered,” I said. “The last place I been that actually sells clothes was Chile, but I wasn’t in no position to buy any.” Which was true when I said it, and is probably still true all these years later, as I don’t imagine they’ve set up a haberdashery in the calaboose since I was rather forcefully told to permanently evacuate the continent.

“You got a name, friend?” said another of the guys.

“The Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones,” I told him.

“Sounds like you’ve got a whole handful of names,” he said, and then they all introduced themselves. They were Hans, Morris, and Vladimir, but none of ‘em seemed to have last names, which was a problem common to a lot of people I met in bars back in those days.

“You going to be here long, Reverend?” asked Hans.

“Long enough to get a grubstake and see if this is the place where I want to build my tabernacle.”

“How will you know?” he asked.

“A tabernacle can do without a lot of things,” I explained, “but it’s absolutely got to have lost souls what need finding, fallen men what need uplifting, and loose women what need tightening. So far Honolulu seems to fill the bill.”

“You know, Doctor Jones,” said Vladimir, “it’s entirely possible that my associates and myself can help you raise the funds you need to erect a truly spectacular tabernacle.”

“Well, that’s right thoughtful of you gents,” I said. “But since this is a religious edifice, I wouldn’t want it to be ostentatious. We won’t use no gold of more than twenty-eight carats, and I won’t have a poorbox studded with more than half a dozen diamonds.”

“I do believe we’re going to be able to do business together,” said Hans with a great big smile.

“Business?” I repeated with a frown. “I don’t do no heavy lifting.”

“We only want you to do what you were born to do,” he said.

“Without a partner of the female persuasion?” I said, getting a little hot under the collar. “There are some things even the Tabernacle of Saint Luke don’t tolerate, at least not without a lot more front money than you’re talking about.”

“All we want you to do is go down to Pearl Harbor and preach the word of the Lord,” said Hans. He shoved some bills across the table at me, while Vladimir poured me a drink of something that smelled so strong even the flies and mosquitoes didn’t want no part of it. “I want you to take this money and get a shave, a haircut and a bath tomorrow morning, and buy yourself some new clothes. We’ll meet here in the morning noon and tell you exactly when we want you to preach.”

“Pearl Harbor?” I repeated. “Sounds like we should be diving for pearls, not trolling for sinners.”

“It was played out half a century ago,” said Morris.

“Nobody has anything to do with it now except the United States Navy,” added Vladimir. “But we’re real estate developers, and we figure if you can draw a crowd, maybe people will discover its charm and start buying some of our property.”

“Well, that makes perfect sense,” I said, “and in all immodesty, I’m a spellbinding speaker and the most charismatic figure you ever saw when I climb into my Sunday preaching duds. I appreciate your front money, but I’d like to know what the job pays once I’ve done it.”

Hans shrugged. “I don’t know. How does five thousand dollars sound?”

“For a thirty-minute sermon?” I said. “Hell, for that much, you get a whole hour.”

He reached out and shook my hand. “What a serendipitous meeting this has been, Doctor Jones.”

“Fortunate, too,” I added, downing my drink.

Vladimir got up and walked away, then came back a minute later.

“Good news, Doctor Jones,” he said. “I know you needed lodging, so I’ve arranged for you to sleep in the cabin out behind the bar.”

“That’s right thoughtful of you, Brother Vladimir,” I said. “And I always repay my obligations. You got any sins short of murder and fixing horse races that need absolving?”

“Not a one,” he said. “I and my companions are honorable men.”

“I knew that right off,” I said. “Just the same, I absolve you of any sins you feel like committing between now and tomorrow at noon.”

We chatted for another couple of minutes, and then I thought I’d take a look at my cabin, so I took my leave of them and wandered out back through the bar. For hot humid summer-type weather an awful lot of the girls had colds, which I noticed because they were all holding their hankies to their noses as I passed by. Then I was outside and heading to my lodgings, which looked an awful lot more like a beat-up falling-down shack than a cabin, but before I got there I got to thinking about how friendly and generous my new partners were, and while I knew I was the best preacher on the island and probably in the whole Pacific and very likely in the whole wide world, even I thought five thousand dollars was just a tad high for a one-hour sermon when the world was still climbing out of the Great Depression, which led me to wonder exactly what Hans, Morris and Vladimir thought they were getting for their money.

So I figured maybe I ought to mosey over to Pearl Harbor and take a look around, and when I got there I found out that just about every square inch of it was owned by the U.S. Navy, and I was pretty sure that Hans, Morris and Vladimir weren’t the Navy’s chosen real estate agents. So I kept walking, and looking around, and in just a couple of minutes I came to the Pearl Museum, and while it was locked and pretty dark inside, I could see that there were a couple of display cases with pearls that Equipoise and Seabiscuit would have choked on. (That’s just a metaphor. As far as I know, hardly any horses eat pearls.)

Anyway, it was all clear to me now. I was supposed to attract a crowd, and probably all the local gendarmes would be on hand to maintain order, while Hans, Morris and Vladimir were plundering the Pearl Museum. The fact that they were going to use me as an innocent dupe got my good Christian blood boiling–the dupe part, not the innocent part–and I decided to teach ‘em a lesson by robbing the museum first. I’d stash the pearls in a nice safe place, like maybe my pocket, and watch their expressions when they came out empty-handed.

There was just one problem, and that was that the museum was locked up tighter than a drum. I spent the better part of two hours trying to get in, and after all that time I wasn’t no closer to it than when I was to watching Bubbles La Tour do her specialty dance at the Rialto 5-Star Burlesque Theater back in Moline, Illinois, which is a true but probably not a very apt comparison.

Finally I figured that if I couldn’t have the pearls myself, the reward for turning them in should still come to a pretty penny, so I asked a couple of locals to point the way to the nearest police station, and five minutes later I walked in the door and asked the desk sergeant to let me speak to whoever was in charge. He told me to go down the hall to the last door on the left and I’d be there, and half a minute later I opened the door and entered the office.

“I got a crime to report,” I announced.

“That not a surprise to me,” said the Chinese feller at the desk, looking up at me, and you could have knocked me over with a feather.

“Ain’t you Inspector Willie Wong?” I said.

“At your service,” he answered.

“I thunk you was in Hong Kong with fifteen or twenty of your sons,” I said. “You remember me?”

“You very hard man to forget,” he said. “Surprised to see you here, Doctor Jones.”

“Never thought I’d make it to Honolulu, huh?” I said.

“Never thought you’d make it out of Hong Kong jail,” he answered. “Still, no sense crying over water under bridge.”

“Come again, Brother Wong?” I said.

“Old Chinese proverb,” he explained. “What crime are you here to report?”

“Well, it ain’t happened yet,” I said. “But it’s going to.”

“That could cover anything from assassination of governor to honorable wife’s new recipe for Macau Surprise.”

I looked him straight in the eye. “What would you say if I told you the three most evil men on the island was planning a sensational robbery?”

“Humble detective savant would ask who your two partners were,” he answered.

“I ain’t got no partners–exactly,” I said. “I’m just a law-abiding citizen doing his civic duty.”

He stared long and hard at me.

“Is something the matter, Brother Wong?” I asked.

“Am trying to picture you as law-abiding citizen,” he replied.

“Damn it, Brother Wong!” I said. “Do you want the details of this here robbery or don’t you?”

He pulled a pen out of his pocket and a pad of paper out of his desk. “Okay, give details.”

“First things first,” I said. “How much is the reward?”

“That all depend.”

“On what?”

“On what they plan to steal. Reward substantial if they plan to steal diamonds, very small if they plan to steal matchsticks.”

“They’re stealing pearls, of course,” I said. “What else do you expect them in the middle of Pearl Harbor?”

“No pearls in Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Just ships.”

“But there’s pearls in the Pearl Museum, ain’t there?”

He nodded his head in agreement. “That probably why it not called Caterpillar Museum.”

“Well?” I said.

“Watched pot never boil,” he said.

“What has a pot got to do with anything?”

He frowned. “Wrong proverb. Meant to say: every stick has two ends.”

“Am I gonna listen to greeting cards all day, or do you want the details?” I demanded.

“You talk, I write.”

“You still ain’t told me what kind of reward we’re looking at,” I told him.

“Everything depend on whether we apprehend them before or after theft,” he said. “If we catch them on way in, can pay $7.03 reward out of department’s petty cash. But if they take pearls out of museum, then insurance company pay reward equal to 10% of pearls’ value.”

“So just to make the math easy,” I said, “if they get away with two million dollars’ worth of pearls, I’d get two hundred thousand dollars once you picked ‘em up?”

“You get one hundred thousand.”

“But ten percent of two million comes to two hundred thousand.”

“Ah…but honorable partner get half,” he said, bowing slightly.

“I didn’t ask you to be my partner,” I said.

“Always darkest before the rain,” he replied.

I was still trying to figure out what that had to do with anything when suddenly he smiled.

“Have idea, Doctor Jones,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “Just between you and honorable self, half my operatives incompetent, other half less than honest.”

“Sounds about par for the course,” I allowed. “At least in my broad and varied experience with constabularies the world over.”

“It occur to humble detective that thieves may possibly bribe untrustworthy officers or elude incompetent ones,” he continued. “Must be a way around this. After all, handsome is as handsome does.”

“I was following you just fine up until the end there, Brother Wong,” I said.

“Must not let thieves get hands on pearls,” he said.

“Then we’re back where we started, and there’s no reward.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “What if you and I steal pearls tonight?”

“Brother Wong,” I said, “you got qualities I ain’t never noticed before. Let’s get going!”

He shook his head. “You are putting penny saved before cart. Reason we steal pearls is so villains can’t.”

“I got no problem with that,” I said. “By the same token, we could knock off the Bank of Hawaii so no criminals can do it.”

“Try not to understand so fast,” said Wong. “We will steal pearls and replace with false pearls. When we apprehend fiendish criminals, we return real pearls, claim reward–and if something go wrong and they escape, they only have false pearls and beware of door that has too many keys.”

“So where do we stash the real pearls until tomorrow afternoon?” I asked.

“Office safe.”

“It may be safe and it may not be,” I said, “but I don’t want to leave them lying on your desk where anyone can grab ‘em.”“No,” he said. “Put in office safe.” He tapped the door of the wall safe behind his chair.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s not let any grass grow under our feet.”

He stared at the floor. “No grass growing. Just have not cleaned rug recently.”

I followed him to the police storeroom, where they kept all kinds of good they’d confiscated. They didn’t have no ladies of the evening there, which differed from most police stations in the glittering capitals of the world, but they almost made up for it in piles and piles of contraband goods, including about fifty boxes of silk stockings with a note saying they belonged to the mayor and anyone who touched ‘em stood a good chance of getting fired, or maybe shot.

Finally we came to the jewelry department, which was awash in diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and other trinkets.

“Not to imply that all your underlings ain’t the soul of honesty,” I said, “but should you be leaving all these treasures out here like this?”

“Underlings souls like soles of Doctor Jones’s shoes,” he said. “Full of holes.”

“Well, then?” I asked.

“These all fake,” he said, pocketing a dozen fine-looking pearls. “Now we put plan into action and see who salutes it.”

He began walking toward the door, and I quick grabbed a handful of phony pearls while his back was turned. Then I followed him out into the night, and a couple of minutes later we found ourselves in front of the Pearl Museum.

Willie Wong tried the front door, and the back door, and a bunch of the barred windows, and then, just about the time I figgered we weren’t going to be able to get inside, he yelled out as follows:

“Seventeen! Twenty-three! Twenty-five!”

At first I figgered he’d lost his mind and thought he was playing quarterback for the Chicago Bears, who were always in need of one, but then three young Chinamen began approaching us, I was about to tell them they were wasting their time, that we were trying to get into the museum, not out of it, when one of them said, “What’s up, Pop?”

“Lucifer Jones, meet sons number seventeen, twenty-three and twenty-five,” said Wong. “This is their night to shadow honorable father and make sure no harm comes to him.” He turned to the young man. “Seventeen, pick lock like honorable father teach you.”

Seventeen pulled out some kind of file or skeleton key or something else that glinted in the moonlight, and a minute later I heard a click! and then we were in. We walked up to the most impressive display cases and Wong told his other two sons to unlock and open them without setting off no alarms.

“That’s a mighty peculiar education for a Chief Inspector to give his kids,” I said as they went to work.

“Helps to reconstruct crimes,” he said, then added proudly: “Small oaks from mighty acorns grow.” Suddenly he frowned. “Well, mostly oaks. One maple.”

“What’s her name?” I asked, just to be polite.

“Formerly Thirteen,” he said. “Now Raoul.”

“Done, Pop,” said Twenty-three and Twenty-five as the cases popped open.

“Fine work,” said Wong. “Extra lollipop for each of you tonight.”

“Pop, I’m thirty years old.”

“Okay,” amended Wong thoughtfully. “Two lollipops. Each.”

He walked forward, pulled a paper bag out of a coat pocket, and began taking the pearls out of the cases and dropping them in the bag. When he’d pulled the best six, he handed the bag to me, then began replacing them with the fakes from the storeroom while his three sons stood guard at the door–and whilst he was doing that, I took the real pearls out of the bag, stuffed ‘em in a pants pocket, and put my six phony pearls into the bag. When he was done we all walked out, Number Seventeen locked the place up behind us, Wong told his sons to mind their manners, eat their greens, say their prayers, and leave his stash of drinkin’ stuff alone or else, and then he and I went back to the police station, where he put the bag of phony pearls into the office safe.

“First step is done,” he said as we walked into his office. “The honor and treasure of Wai Momi is safe.”

“This Wai Momi owns the museum, does he?” I asked.

“Wai Momi is Hawaiian for Pearl Harbor,” he replied. “And now best you go to room so can be there when evil confederates show up.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow right after you arrest these blaggards.”

He stood up and shook my hand. “Most fortuitous meeting, Doctor Jones.”

“I agree wholeheartedly, Inspector Wong,” I said, walking to the door.

As I was leaving, he called out after me: “Apple a day keep doctor away.”

I went back to the shack, pulled the real pearls out of my pocket, wrapped ‘em in a handkerchief, and stuck ‘em under my cot’s mattress. Then I lay down and went to sleep, wishing I had a nice faithful dog beside me to scare off the rats that were watching the roaches as if it was a sporting event and they were the audience and three trillion mosquitoes were the cheerleaders.

I was up bright and early–I figger I hit the hay at about 4:00, and the snake started crunching on the rats at 5:30–and I prepared to climb into my clothes when I realized it had been quite some little while since I’d climbed out of ‘em, so I just made sure the pearls were safe, and then I walked out and took a deep breath of the cool fresh air, and if the shack hadn’t been right next to Bruno’s garbage dump it probably would have been right refreshing. Then I hung around a couple of hours until Hans, Morris and Vladimir showed up.

“Good morning, Doctor Jones,” said Hans. “The big day has arrived!”

“And not a minute too soon,” I said as a pair of mangy old cats walked into the shack looking for a little no-legged snack. “Now exactly where is it that you want me to give my sermon?”

“Right at Dock 7,” said Morris. “It’s the largest of them, the ship’s in port, and most of the tourists will be in the area gift-shopping or preparing to each lunch.”

“You sure you wouldn’t rather have me give it by the Pearl Museum?” I asked. “A place like that probably gets a bushel of tourists.”

“I think it’s closed for remodeling,” said Vladimir.

“And they’re tearing up the street,” added Hans.

“Terrible gift shop, too,” said Morris.

I half-expected ‘em to tell me it was rife with plague, but anyway now I knew for certain my keen deductive brain had been functioning on all cylinders and that they were planning to knock off the Pearl Museum.

“When do I get my money?” I asked.

“We’ll all meet back here at, shall we say, 3:00?” said Hans, which meant they were planning on leaving the island between noon and three.

“Sounds good to me, Brethren,” I said. “I guess I’d better hunt up some new duds now.”

“And shave,” said Vladimir.

“And bathe,” added Morris.

“Yes, especially bathe,” said Hans.

“Thoroughly,” said Vladimir.

We shook hands and went our separate ways. I stopped by a barber shop, which charged me double for the shave, and told me he’d drowned a handful of fellow travelers when he cut and shampooed my hair. Then I went to a public bathhouse, which at first said they didn’t have no soap or scrub brush that was up to the task, but I slipped ‘em a few extra dollars and they guv me a tub of my own, a bar of soap, a bottle of bleach, and a can of something they used to clean farm machinery. Then it was off to the haberdasher, but they wanted too much money, and finally I got the brilliant idea of going to the local undertaker, where I found a fine black Sunday-go-to-meeting suit for half price, though I had to wait while they removed its current occupant.

Then, since I’d gotten all spruced up in record time, it was just a matter of killing twenty minutes until the clock struck noon, and I got up on a soap box–well, actually a box filled with dead tuna–and spend the next hour giving them my best hellfire-and-damnation speech, with a bunch of the racier psalms and a few of the less esoteric begattings tossed in just to keep ‘em on their toes.

Just as I was finishing up with a little personal speculation about what Solomon did with wives Number 116 through 122 inclusive of a Saturday night, I saw Willie Wong and his men on the outskirts of the crowd, leading Hans, Morris and Vladimir off to the calaboose in handcuffs. He nodded to his men, who kept prodding the three villains along, while he stayed where he was and let me finish my sermon, which had drawn quite a considerable audience once I started telling ‘em what each step and move of Salome’s dance meant, and you could have heard a pin drop when I got to the sixth and seven veils.

Finally I told ‘em all to go forth and sin no more, and then I added that if they absolutely couldn’t avoid sinning they should at least do their sinning at Murphy’s and down the road a bit at Schwartz’s, since they’d each made a little contribution to the my tabernacle right before I got up to speak. Then the crowd dispersed and Willie Wong walked up to me.

“Case closed, villains caught, all right with world,” he announced.

“I’m glad to hear it, Brother Wong,” I said.

“Sent off for reward,” he continued. “Now I go to Museum and replace real pearls.”

“Uh…I may have to leave the island very suddenly…” I began, because I sure didn’t plan to be around when the curator took a look at the pearls Wong was putting back.

“Ah, so?” he said.

“Press of business,” I said. “If I do, I’ll let you know where to forward the reward.”

“Too bad,” he said. “Thought we have big victory dinner, invite press.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

Instantly he pulled out a note pad and began scribbling. “That a good one,” he said. “Humble detective add to collection of proverbs.”

Then we shook hands and he went off to the museum. As for me, I headed back to the shack behind Bruno’s, avoided all the six legged and four-legged and no-legged corpses on the floor, reached under the mattress, and pulled out the pearls. I stuck them and the handkerchief in my pocket, walked down to the docks, found one beat-up old cargo ship parked at the end of a row of navy ships, and clambered aboard.

“Where are you going?” asked the guy who let me on deck.

“Away,” I said.

“Well, you picked the right boat,” he said. “Away is right where we’re heading.”

And half an hour later we were out in the open sea, heading to somewhere else, which was fine by me, and away from Hawaii, which was vital to me.

They didn’t have no passenger cabins, since they never carried no passengers, but they give me a broom closet with enough room to stretch out and a bare light bulb so I could read my well-worn copy of the Good Book and admire my pearls and plan how I was going to spend the millions I was going to sell them for, and that was just what I was doing when one of the crewmen opened the door and handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you call it,” he answered, “but out here on the high seas we call it an envelope.”

Then he was gone, and I opened it, and out fell two quarters and a dime. I couldn’t figure why someone would send me sixty cents, so I opened the letter and read as follows:

Dear Doctor Jones:

Thank you for most fortuitous meeting. Humble detective well aware of your moral flexibility from previous experience, so keep watchful eye on you in museum, and of course see you put real pearls in pocket. Expect no less from man of your credentials.

Capture three confederates at 12:15 PM today. Reason not show up until almost 1:00 is that we have to stop by your dwelling to appropriate real pearls, which are now back in museum, and replace them with worthless ones that you think I not see you take from storeroom.

Sixty cents included with this letter. As I explain to you, reward depend on value of item stolen. Your partners steal six worthless imitations. Honolulu Police Department always pay its debts, and are pleased to give you ten cents for each of them.

Another case happily concluded. Take advice from wise old detective: cannot make silk purse from sow’s ear, at least without very expensive special equipment.

Inspector Willie Wong, Honolulu Police

Ten seconds later I got violently seasick for the first time in my blameless life.