The Mystery of Chung Y1 Maio

By JOSEPH GOLLOMB

Murder of Lovely Chinese Bride Unsolved—Secret Oriental Tong of New York
Suspected—Married in America—European Honeymoon of Aristocratic Couple
Ends in Tragedy—Husband Pays the Supreme Penalty, Professing Innocence

IF A mystery is the more challenging when
it is simple in outline, familiar in setting and
modern in atmosphere, then it is quite
understandable why Scotland Yard should
have felt so intrigued by the case of Chung
Yi Maio. Naive detective stories would
have it that Scotland Yard always solves its
mysteries, especially the simple ones; the
fact in the case of Chung Yi Maio smites
this fiction a severe blow. Then, as if to make
up for that hurt to story-book naivete, this
strange case seems to corroborate a still
more simple belief that the Chinese are a
more mysterious race than any other, that
they excel in “ways that are dark,” and that

of Crime

even in such fundamentals as love, life and
death they differ inscrutably from the way
in which other human beings feel about
these things.

Chung Yi Maio was the son of a wealthy
Peking merchant who wanted his only child
to escape the chaos and civil war that has
racked the Chinese nation for a quarter of a
century and more. In the course of these
upheavals Chung Yi Maio’s father lost his
wife and most of his kin and suffered so
much that he finally converted what was left
of his business into ready cash, willed it all
to his son and committed suicide.

Chung Yi Maio was a slightly built

Midi

LSS SAAT SE

youth, but surprisingly strong for his size.
He had a warm emotional nature, but his
smooth, simply modelled face was hard to
read. He was sensitively constituted, but he
could endure hardship like a savage.

Above all he could endure it in the ser-
vice of his loyalties.

Carrying out the dead man’s wish, Chung
Yi Maio made a complete break with the
past, left China, came to America, visiting
British Columbia before taking up the study
of law at the University of Chicago.

Like most transplanted Orientals, Chung
Yi Maio looked well in American dress and
in his case clothes seemed to express the

When the steamer landed at Glasgow, however, Mrs. Maio noticed that he turned pale at the sight of two Chinamen.

OCTOBER, 1938

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