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A Detective-mystery Novel
by
Harry Stephen Keeler
Dear Doctor Hulbert:
It is a pleasure to inscribe to you—and entirely unknown to yourself—a dedication that is at the same time a letter expressing my admiration that you should have accurately diagnosed, as existing within and about a certain spinal cord, certain pathology—fully confirmed later by operation, at the hands of the neuro-surgeon of the Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago!—which pathology entirely escaped a great diagnostic institution on the plains of Minnesota—an equally great neurological institute on the banks of the Hudson—the “neuro-surgeon” of an “ultra” Chicago hospital overlooking Lake Michigan (who not only missed the diagnosis, but declared, moreover, that there was “nothing wrong")—another “neuro-surgeon” practising in a great research hospital on Chicago's southwest side (who likewise declared there was “nothing wrong")—and 7—count 'em!—Chicago neurologists, members—for all I know!- of the Cook County Rocking-Chair Neurological Diagnosticians. The owner of that spinal cord gratefully tenders this dedicatory appreciation.
HARRY STEPHEN KEELER
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. I
It was exactly 4:10 in the morning—at least by the greasy clock in the window of the all-night Greek restaurant close to the street intersection—as I hopped off the Clark Street car at Chicago Avenue to size up the offices of MacLeish MacPherson, M.D., to try to estimate just what luck I might have on the morrow in my strange mission to him. Under my left arm, in the snug brown paper wrappings with which I had invested it, I hugged the curious object that was to form the basis of that mission.
Whether sizing up the windows, and the building containing them, of the stingiest, greediest surgeon—at least so I had gathered!—in all Chicago; the man who—as I'd also gathered!—could outbargain 4 Scotchmen and 20 Armenians—would give me any clue as to the outcome of any dealings with him, was problematical, perhaps. But—lo and behold!—that operation was to reveal something almost as valuable: MacLeish MacPherson was actually in his offices at this outlandish hour, either not having gone home at all last night—or having, for some reason, come down early! For a tall shadow moved freely hither and about, against lighted translucent shades in that second story whose four tall narrow windows carried, respectively, the words, silhouetted against the light: Eye—Ear—Nose—Throat.
I stood on the corner wonderingly, and surveyed the ancient four-story red-painted brick building across the way which housed the office of MacLeish MacPherson, M.D. No one paid the least attention to me, for this was one of those uptown corners that never, apparently, go to sleep. A night-life junction made by bedraggled pawnshop-studded Clark Street running north and south—and down-at-heel Chicago Avenue running east and west. A newsboy across the way called out morning papers lustily; the cigar store on the corner right in back of me was brightly lighted; from up street, somewhere, the strains of the orchestra in some dime-a-dance dancehall, still operating, were audible; a score of persons, crossing the street—or lounging on the corners—could be counted. But whether or why MacPherson was down in his office at this hour, he'd certainly picked a dingy enough corner to practise on. And a dingier building, to boot, to practise in. Even by the artificial light from the street lamps and few lighted shops, one could see that its red-painted brickwork needed a good tuckpointing all over. And, even by the light through the shades, it could be seen that the gold leaf comprising MacPherson's name—four times repeated!—and his specialties—was cracked and missing at the corners of some of the letters. And with the several degrees which MacLeish MacPherson held from Paris and Vienna universities, he might have been in the Loop, a foremost specialist.
But the silhouette, moving hither and about against the window shades, was decidedly no janitor with mop and pail And so, since my man—for some strange reason—was in, I hoisted my odd parcel tighter under my left arm, and crossed Clark Street. Continuing on past the corner, however, to find the entrance to the red-brick building, since plainly no entrance faced Clark Street. And I found it shortly. Just a wooden arch, lighted with a sickly street light, on Chicago Avenue—an arch which hadn't seen paint for ages. With a tall flight of worn, wooden stairs inside, leading up to the first floor. And the blue enamel sign of some outfit of doubtlessly quack dentists—“Dove Brothers, Plate and Pyorrhea Specialists” nailed to the upright of each step.
Inside, the first-floor landing, lighted by one large ceiling light, showed two rows of office doors—6 doors in all—with ground-glass fronts—and each, without exception, dark. The ceiling was tall, and the whole place dampish. There was no elevator, either side, going to those further floors—and, even if there had been, it wouldn't have been running at this hour. But a narrow stairway in the west wall led upward. So I went up it.
The second floor was like the first. A lesser ceiling light giving the illumination up here. But added to by two lighted door panels. One of the two was that of the Dove Brothers, Specialists, who, in spite of all their blue enameled signs visible on the steps leading in from Chicago Avenue, were evidently just a one-room office; for the light inside was so brilliant that I could see right through the ground-glass panel of the door, making out the free end of a partition wall on one side of which were seats for waiting patients, and on the other side of which were two dental chairs; in fact I was easily able to make out the blurry figure of a man, with forceps or something in his hand, working—strangely enough, again, at this hour of the morning—on a patient in the farther chair.
The door bearing the black painted letters marking the office of MacLeish MacPherson, M.D., was directly across the way from—and one door north of—that marking the cubicle which housed the Brothers Dove—or at least, just at the moment, one of the brothers Dove. And I opened that door, and entered MacPherson's place.
A small anteroom greeted me, uncarpeted, with two benches and four stiff-backed wooden chairs. A wooden railing, with a gate in it, ran across the farther side of the ante-room, and in the cut-off rear portion sat an ancient reception desk. The whole place was lighted by but a single pendent bulb, without even a shade. The anteroom—three sides of it, anyway—had been made by running partition boards from floor to ceiling. Cutting it virtually out from some larger room which, measuring at least from Clark Street outside, spanned not less than four windows. The reception desk back of the railing showed no signs of paper, or ink, or records, or in fact, of any usage whatsoever. Nor did it even have a chair, swivel or otherwise, attached to it. Which meant that, even in the daytime, no blooming office or reception girl graced MacPherson's offices. And the reason for which, from what I had heard of MacLeish MacPherson, was obvious enough. Office girls, blooming or otherwise, cost money!
A door in the farthest expanse of partition board was a few inches ajar. And at the sound of my entrance into the ante-room, it swung open wider, and MacLeish MacPherson—as so he was shortly to admit himself to be!—came through it.
Quite professionally and without the least element of surprise on his face that I should be calling here at this hour of the morning, MacLeish MacPherson, M.D., confronted me. Though he did give me a curious glance towards my parcel, as though he wondered whether I might be up there to try to borrow something—on some hypothetical collateral.
A tall man, about 45, MacLeish MacPherson was, with a greasy black forelock, tinged with grey, hanging across his forehead. Shaggy eyebrows, but an otherwise smooth face. A smoking jacket on, patched in several places. His collar undeniably in its fourth day of use. And I wondered, when I looked at it, if he stayed all night here now and then that he might surreptitiously scrub his own floor! He wore half-moon spectacles, over which half-moons he took me in.
He tried, in fact, to exude professional pleasure, as though I were a client, come at the time all clients should come.
“Good morning, sir,” he greeted me. “And what can I do for you?”
“You are—Doctor MacPherson?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
There was a note of annoyance in his tones that I should even make a question of who he was. And so I answered hurriedly.
“I only asked, Doctor, because—but Spelvin
is my name,” I told him. “George Spelvin. I happened to be about to change streetcars here tonight to ride westward. And happened also to have occasion to visit you tomorrow.” I did not tell him how I had really ridden up here to look over his place in advance!”And, to my surprise,” I went on, “I saw your windows lighted up—and signs that maybe you yourself were on hand in your office. And so—I just walked right on up—then and there. However, if I'm barging in here at the wrong hour, I'll come back tomorrow, when hours begin officially, and —”
“No, no, no, no!” he returned, with what seemed undue haste. “A number of us professional men on this corner—and in Bush Bourse across the way—have entered into an agreement to keep all-night hours one night a week. That is, you understand, we've agreed to keep hours on the same night. That of Wednesday. There are so many, many night workers around here, you know, with several hours off duty, either in the early mornings—or before midnight. Also a printing district to the west of here—with
presses running day and night—if you know what that means! And a night police court at
Chicago Avenue Police Station farther up Chicago Avenue, to boot. And so here I am, and will be—all night tonight—until eight o'clock in the morning. And not back here again, then, till two in the afternoon.” He broke off sharply, as though he feared he might have been wasting all this explanation on a panhandler instead of a patient. “You wanted to see me on a medical matter, Mr. Spelvin?” And gave another significant glance at my package.
Thus was simply explained the mystery of MacLeish MacPherson—and the Brothers Dove—working at 4:10 in the morning. Building up, with various other specimens of local “go-getters” thereabouts, a sort of 7th day of work—in the form of a full night. And thus a 7th day of income! But seeing him waiting politely for an answer to his pointed question of whether I'd come to see him on a medical matter, I answered him truthfully:
“Yes, Doctor—well, rather that is—surgical!”
“Ah—good! That is, of course—” He broke off. “Just be seated, then. I've a patient—off duty from her work in the restaurant across the street for an hour—on whom I'm just finishing a glasses fitting. Be with you in a few minutes—five at most. Sorry I've nothing here for you to read, but—”
“Just slip me out your latest newspaper, Doctor—that will be okay.”
“Very good.” He passed inside, then emerged at once, a paper in his hand. “I don't take an evening paper—haven't time for two a day—but here's my copy of this morning's Sun—but no by Jove, it's yesterday morning's paper, now! This morning's Sun lies downstairs on the stand of that yelping newsboy.”
“Yesterday morning's paper will do me fine,” I assured him. “I haven't read any of yesterday's news—or even that of the day before—so this will be just as fresh to me as one from off the stand over there.” Which just happened to be true enough—considering many and various things. “In fact, the sports alone will keep me busy,” I assured him further.
“Oh—the sports?” he said. He scratched his
chin dubiously. “Hrmph! Well—sorry—but the sporting section isn't here. And—and I haven't got it. Dr. Dove, the dentist across the hall, buys the paper each day for the sports—and tosses me in this part—without the sports.”
It became more than plain, with every encounter with MacLeish MacPherson, that he had mastered the art of actually shaving a penny. Taking half a paper!—and getting that half-paper free by waiting till another man discarded it!
“The news section, then, will be okay,” I returned hastily, to save him from his obvious embarrassment.
With which he bowed in acquiescence, handed me the paper, the frontmost pages of which were turned back so that the editorials were outermost, bowed stiffly once more, and withdrew back into his office. Where, through the half-opening in the door, I could hear him trying various “pluses” and “minuses” in front of one of his patient's eyes, inquiring whether each made the line “better or worse.” And, turning one of the stiff-backed hard-seated chairs about so that the light from the one pendent bulb in the anteroom would fall partially over my shoulder, I dropped down into it, setting my precious parcel on the floor between my feet where my ankles rested against its sides, and unfolding the paper back to where its front sheet was uppermost. And commenced to read.
And, reading, felt my eyes actually widen to the size of saucers!
For a brief story set forth there—which I read to its end—rather the half-column photograph printed in the story!—was that of a face I had seen not once, nor fleetingly, but over a considerable number of days. Nor did I have to guess or hypothesize at that fact, either, for, as I read, many, many things came together in my mind like parts of a mosaic. And fitted—to every last angle of each piece! The face was that of a man dead—according to even the very first sub-head of the story. But whom I definitely and unequivocally knew to be alive subsequent to the date given in that head! And to whose location, except at this very moment, I held more than a mere clue! Which latter two facts were important, to say the least—for the story conveyed the interesting information that if the owner of that face were turned over to certain authorities—either the physicians, superintendent or attendants of a certain insane institution near Chicago—before midnight of this
day now being begun, the person who turned him over, or caused him to be thus turned over, would be richer by a huge fortune.
$100,000 in short!
And here was I—at 4:20 in the morning—with not less than the tail-end—if not the tail itself!—of certain information by which $100,000 might be made to change hands—if and maybe, to be sure!—sitting in the office of MacLeish MacPherson, M.D.! When by rights I should be faring forth, utilizing all the valuable seconds of the 19 hours and 40 minutes left before midnight, on a plan by which that $100,000 might be made to—
But the sound of both MacPherson and his patient rising in the next room—and the feel of my ankles pressing against the paper-wrapped skull at my feet—told me that here, on Clark Street and Chicago Avenue at this moment, was some real business about real things—that had best be concluded before chasing either rainbows or hundred thousands!
And so, waiting for MacPherson to bow out his patient and to bow me in, I re-read the story once more.
The headlines of the story read:
FIRST NATIONAL BANK REFUSES TO
RETURN ESCROWED HUNDRED
THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
MONEY TO SANDRINGHAM ESTATE
TRUSTEES TILL MIDNIGHT
EXPIRATION HOUR TOMORROW
NIGHT
Virtually Admits Death of Gilrick Sandringham, Escaped Millionaire Lunatic, in Dynamite Shanty Explosion September 25th, but Points Out Possible Complications in Fact that Only Dead Man's Feet and One Eyeball Were Found!
President of the Sandringham Estate Trustees leaves bank after violent scene, overheard and seen by many of the customers in place at time, threatening to withdraw all business of the estate.
The photograph inserted in the story was, quite naturally, neither of the two arguing business men—but that of the dramatic subject of their argument: Gilrick Sandringham, escaped lunatic. And it was that identical face that I had viewed—since and after the date of that escape which was given in the story as September 13th, 29 days past; and it was just that man who was alive, to my positive knowledge, on both September 26th and September 27th—both of which dates being definitely past and beyond the date of his supposed demise, given as September 25th. Handsome he was, in the photograph, to say the least—and handsome he was when I had viewed him—more so then, perhaps, as then he was not wearing the monocle which in this photograph he affected. Bearded with a Vandyke beard, and mustached, in spite of his undeniable mid-thirties, he suggested one who, at least in the corridors of an insane asylum, might have considered himself a king, or something. Some sort of literarily inclined king, even, if one were to make anything of the flowing Windsor tie hanging under his chin. And I marvelled, as l looked at the newspaper reproduction of Gilrick Sandringham—and which evidently represented the only photograph extant or obtainable of him from either friends or asylum authorities—that those last-named authorities had been so stupid as not to have seen the contingency of his possible escape, some day—and the removal of those hirsute appendages. Including the striking monocle and the even more striking Windsor tie. In short, I said to myself, had they been on the job, they would have had a photograph of him in their files without beard and mustache and monocle and Windsor tie, as well as with.
But now the brief story which I re-read, certain parts of it again forming as perfect a mosaic with certain other things, as on my first reading. And which story ran:
Abner Goffman, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Sandringham Estate, the million dollar estate left in trust 6 years ago by Rufus Sandringham to his only son, Gilrick Sandringham, departed the offices of President Howard Hendley of the First National Bank today after a violent scene which was audible to and overheard by many of the customers at the bank. The scene was precipitated by an argument concerning the $100,000 posted by the trustees in escrow with the bank shortly after Sandringham, presumably armed with a loaded revolver, sawed his way September 13th out of Birkdale
Insane Asylum, as a reward to anyone returning the escaped lunatic to the asylum before midnight, October 13th.
Goffman, it seems, stepped over to the bank to pick up the escrowed money because of a temporary shortage of liquid assets in the Sandringham Estate, most of which is kept in real estate. He desired, he explained, to make prompt payment that day—the day on which such payment was technically due—of the $5,000 annual fee due each of the 6 trustees who administer the now-dead Gilrick Sandringham's estate, these being, in addition to himself, Henry L. Oland, Daniel C. Rying, Oscar J. Anderson, L. Verrill
Meyrenfield and John Ellington Smith. He had expected, he said, to take care of this $35,000 obligation to the trustees through the cash sale that day of a certain holding in the Sandringham Estate; but the sale having fallen through, for the time being, he had just decided to release the bank from the obligation of further holding the now useless escrowed money. Hendley, however, refused to relinquish the reward money—at least till midnight tomorrow—pointing out to Goffman that, while he himself personally was 100-per cent assured that Sandringham was dead, the only identification of the person of the apparent “tramp" blown to pieces in the dynamite shanty near Gill City, Nebraska,
on September 25th, was a single human eyeball possessing an unmistakably brown iris—nothing in itself alone to constitute identification, to be sure!—and a pair of human feet clad in a pair of Birkdale Asylum socks, from which the red threads had been plucked out, according to the invariable custom at Sandringham.
Hendley said later to reporters, present at the time in the bank, interviewing one of the vice-presidents on a financial matter, that the Sandringham Estate trustees, at the time Gilrick Sandringham escaped, frightened to death by his threat that if ever he got out he would kill not less than 2 of them, and permitted under Rufus Sandringham's peculiar will to utilize assets of the estate in various odd matters such as even this, had posted the reward money—constituting even then nearly all the liquid assets of the trust—in a somewhat unusual way: for, not content merely with making it completely unassignable—this, presumably, so that any possible scandals in connection with its ultimate disbursement, would be avoided—they had put it in actual escrow with the bank, making the bank agent for the reward and responsible that it go to the person delivering Sandringham back to the asylum. If for any reason, Hendley pointed out, Sandringham were alive, and were returned to Birkdale Asylum before midnight tomorrow, under the peculiar wording of the escrow agreement, the bank itself would be liable for the reward.
Goffman, at his office in the Hartford Building, said later, to reporters, that the trustees could easily wait 48 hours for the payments of their $5,000 trustee fees—even if this were the first occurrence during the entire trusteeship of such unnecessary delay—but that so long as President Hendley had commenced to split hairs on pure technicalities, the trustees would undoubtedly vote, at their first meeting, to withdraw all their financial business from the bank.
I had just finished my second reading of that story which had made much—so much!—clear in my mind, before Dr. MacPherson reappeared in the doorway, ushering out a stout, red-faced woman who looked like a restaurant cook—and who was, as it proved to be by his words, a restaurant cook. In fact, with the little pencil encased in the notebook that rested in my breast pocket, I had even finished writing down, hastily, on a blank page—page 31—of that book, the last names only of the six Sandringham estate trustees as given in the story; their full names and middle initials, which identified where they might be located if necessary, were of no interest to me. If any name in that story was of interest, it was that of one Howard Hendley who had charge of that one hundred thousand dollars reward money! And that name was an easy one to remember.
I was putting my notebook away as MacPherson and his patient appeared.
“There, Nellie,” he was saying paternally you shouldn't have any more repetitions of your bad luck now—at least, not with the glasses you'll be wearing. However, why don't you give Gus, over there, as good as he gives you?—tell him to get rid of the cockroaches altogether—instead of swearing at you every time one gets in the food you're preparing? All right. The glasses will be ready in the midafternoon of day after tomorrow. I'll check them here and see that they're left there, at the restaurant, for you when you come on duty. Come in, Mr. Spelvin.”
I dropped the newspaper, which was still on my knee, atop a spare chair, and taking up my package, followed MacPherson into his working office. Where, once inside the doorway built into the partition board wall of the anteroom, I looked to right and then to left. It was a stupendously huge room, plainly created in a day when office rent was not calculated by the square foot. Uncarpeted quite, MacPherson's feet ahead of me making an eerie clatter over its bare boards. The medical degrees I had heard about were there all right!—one between each window—framed in black wood frames, and I could make out “Sorbonne” on one situated between the two leftmost windows and just above a small dingy gilt chair where, evidently, the fat cook had been sitting, since she had not been silhouetted against the window shades as had MacPherson.
“Be seated,” he said, “till I borrow some ink from across the hall—to fill out your history card.”
“Oh,” I began, “it won't be nec—”
“Oh yes it will!” he declared firmly. And, ink bottle in hand, was gone—evidently toward Dr. Dove across the way who seemed to supply so much in the doctor's life.
I crossed over and dropped into the gilt chair where the fat woman might have sat, as, from the doorway, that was the only chair I could see—and settling down atop it, found that I had a complete view of MacPherson's office while he was gone—including both sides of that inset partition-built anteroom. Directly across from me, close to one side of the partitioned inlet, hung an eye chart, with a light reflecting upon it, which proclaimed that huge office to be exactly 20 feet deep—since 20 feet—no more—no less!—was “optical infinity.” Close to the chart was a chemical laboratory, if one could call a sink, with scuffed enamel, surmounted by a half-dozen glass shelves containing reagent bottles and test tubes a laboratory.
Close to my right elbow, in that northeast corner of the big room, was a sort of dental chair—though considerably more than a dental chair, for it was one that could be opened out, made horizontal, and turned into various sorts of an operating table. It even had clamps for human heels and whatnot, if necessary. And a large light with broad reflector hanging directly above it. In that wall to my right was a fire grate, showing how ancient this building must really be.
That MacPherson was tremendously supplied with surgical instruments was more than plain, for they stood about on glass shelves in a great glass case surmounting the fire grate, and extending past it several feet on each side. Many of the instruments were actually rusty. It was a case made of intersecting, narrow wood frames, containing panes; and various of the panes had been broken long ago, but never replaced. So the instruments, for the most part, looked not only dusty, but downright insanitary. But Lord knows he did have a large supply. At least for an eye, ear, nose and throat man! It seemed to me then that at some time in his career he must have splurged deeply—or else had received a bequest of such articles, some of them useless for his own profession.
And now, gazing toward the other wall of his once, far to my left, I saw where it was that he had meant for me to sit down. For there stood an antediluvian roll-top desk, with a rickety swivel chair in front of it, and a capacious leather-seated visitor's chair to its side, right where the light from the windows, in the daytime at least, would fall on any client's face. The desk appeared to be covered with papers, all classified in some erratic way by queer and ill-assorted paper weights holding them down singly and by groups: and as I rose and went over to sit down where I should, I saw that they were mostly letters, face down—one exceedingly thin flimsy sheet being pinioned, all by itself, underneath
an enormously heavy rusty nut which MacPherson must have picked up somewhere. The others were held down respectively by stones, a scissors and in one case, a little bottle marked “gallstones.”
The leather seat of that visitor's chair was broken in the middle, crosswise, a tuft of hair stuffing peeping through, and not caring to fall clear to Jericho and disappear in MacPherson's absence, I dropped into his swivel chair, depositing my paper-wrapped skull not far from where the nut-covered letter lay.
And waited patiently. For I had plenty to think about!
MacPherson was gone for quite some time. It seemed that Dr. Dove was having to squeeze his own ink bottle, or else his fountain pen. And leaning back turned 180 degrees in the swivel chair, hands back of head, I couldn't help but notice, even thinking deeply as I was, one curious thing: all of MacPherson's windows were equipped with jet black shades as well as ordinary linen ones. The jet ones were up. Black shades which ran up and down in patent slots and had curved fasteners at the bottom, by which, I saw, the place could exclude every bit of light. Probably, I figured, they were for the purpose of turning the once, on bright days, into an eye-examination room, though, glancing at the big light overhanging the operating table, it occurred to me that they might be a means by which he could operate on noses and throats by that one, powerful, down-directed light, uncomplicated by cross-currents of daylight. Amidst all the worn and dilapidated furnishings in the office, they, however, struck a curious false note of up-to-dateness and efficiency.
But MacPherson was back now, an ink bottle in his hand, and I changed myself hurriedly to the leather-bottomed chair, though I did not sink more than a foot.
He glanced curiously, as he creaked into his own swivel chair, at the package I'd left atop his desk. But said nothing.
Instead, he dipped his pen, flipped forth a large, white card from the top drawer of his desk, and proceeded to write as he talked.
“The name is George Spelvin, you said? Yes. And what's your age, Mr. Spelvin?”
“What do you think, Doctor?”
He glanced at me shrewdly. “I'd say 32.”
“Not only fair—but perfect,” I told him, “However, Doctor, we don't need to—”
“Yes we do. And now, Spelvin, what are your symptoms—but here—first—what's your occupation?”
I smiled.
“Doesn't, Doctor, the name Spelvin—that is, George Spelvin—yet sound at all familiar to you? Even a little?”
“Hrmph!” He gazed at me reflectively over his half-moons. “Yes, faintly, it does. Spelvin—Spelvin—Spelvin—yet I don't quite connect.”
“Then I guess I'll have to help you, Doctor. I'm the former gunner in the U. S. Navy who—no, you wouldn't know me for that. But I'm the gunner who, when he got mustered out over in Spain a year ago—after 12 years pointing gun barrels for Uncle Sam!—went on inland—and became the bullfighter, Toreo Americana. Now do you know me?”
He scratched his head. “Well, I guess I do—yes. Though if I recall rightly, there's been several Americans in the last few years who've distinguished themselves that way. In the bull ring—yes. So—” He gazed at me helplessly. .And scratched his head again. “Well—was there a bullfight tonight?—in the Stadium?—that you happened to be going home past my place—at this hour?”
I laughed. “No! No indeed. The explanation of that, Doctor, is simply that coming into the Loop around midnight tonight—with my package there which I'd gotten on the West Side ,- I found it necessary—at least, advisable—to see a certain party. More or less on business.:My party was a woman. Booked at a certain hotel. But my party, unfortunately, was out on a 'party'—so I waited. And continued to wait. And being a sort of sticktoitive cuss—or a hopeless optimist!—I continued to wait—clear till
3 A.M. when she finally showed up. And after concluding my business with her, I sallied on
northward, wondering whether I could get a few hours sleep before morning would get here—and I could call on you.”
“I see,” he said, satisfied with my more than true explanation. He gazed at me helplessly again. “So—you're a bullfighter?”
“Was!”
I said devoutly. “But am no longer! If you'd ever seen a man gored to death in a bullring, Doctor—you'd quit too! No, one sight of that—and that's exactly what I did. With the equivalent of one thousand American dollars I'd piled up in my last three bullfights plus my mustering-out steamship fare, I came back to the good old U. S. A. Chicago, in fact. Began to figure I couldn't support a wife on shooting naval guns—now that I was out of the Navy—nor fighting bulls in the stockyards. So—““Married?” he asked, pen in hand.
“No. But figured I would be someday. So that's why I did what I did. Which—since my father had seen to it that I had a highschool education before I went into the Navy—and I'd done the equivalent of a college year in reading aboard that old battleship Arizona I was on—was to join up at the University of Illinois Medical School.”
“Ah—medic, eh? Well, now, Spelvin, I don't give free rates to medical students, you know. Though my rates are fair—”
“Gosh, Doctor,” I told him, “I'm not trying to get any free rates! I'm here to pay for anything I get. In fact, if I capture a certain—“ I foundered a bit here, trying to think of something analogous to the Gilrick Sandringham reward money. “If I capture a certain lottery ticket—which I might—if and maybe!—in the next 20 hours more or less, I may even come back and double any fee I pay you.”
“Lottery ticket?” he said. “What—do you mean?”
“Just,” I lied curtly, “that a certain man holds a winning lottery ticket in a Mexican lottery—and—and doesn't know it. If I can locate him—buy it from him—well—my troubles are over.”
“How much is the ticket for?” he asked hurriedly.
“A mere hundred thousand,” I said nonchalantly.
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Good heavens, man, any man who holds a winning ticket of that size is going to know, by whatever means are used in such things, that he's a winner.”
“Well,” I said., “this happens to be a bit of a peculiar case. And with plenty of problems connected with it. But you may be right. So I'll continue to be just what I am—a poor student—who's stuck his wad into a medical education and may have to use that education eventually to make a living—instead of enjoying Mexican lottery prizes. Yes.” I paused. “But in the first place, Doctor, let me frankly explain—I'm not here for any advice—concerning an illness. Or any surgery on myself.”
He stared at me. Then tore up his card. “All right. If you're not ill, we certainly need no history card. And I need no written memos to remember a bullfighter. Now—exactly what is it you want of me?”
“Well,” I began, “the first thing we were advised to do at Illinois U. there was to pick out the subject of our sophomore thesis and pick fast! Before someone else got our subject. And the chap up ahead of me—and ten years younger, in the bargain!—advised me to grab the Cowper operation for mine.”
“Oh yes. Permanent artificial entrance into the antrum, when it's chronically infected, by which it can receive daily irrigation, administered by the patient himself. Well, you sure picked an old one. That is, if you did pick that. Four hundred years that's been done.”
“Though,” I said, “I'm informed that the Egyptians catheterized the bladder 6,000 years ago.”
“Judging from the instruments found—they did,” he admitted. “But go on.”
“Well, Doctor, it's just this.” I reached over upon his desk, took up my package, and untying it, unwrapped the skull which was in the paper. “My money will probably leak away on me faster than I dreamed. And so I thought I'd sew this sophomore thesis business up, now, while I had a little left. This skull, here, I bought tonight over across from the Cook County Hospital for $15.”
“Too much!” he commented. “I could have gotten it for $12.”
“Yes! Well then—I'm $3 out! But anyway, I got hold of this tonight—around 11 o'clock—just as the Jewish proprietor was closing up, and—”
“That was Sol Greenbaum,” he commented, shrewdly. “If it's right across from the County Hospital. The foxiest old Jew who ever sold second-hand medical goods. Though I still maintain I could have beaten your price a mile. But go on.”
I did.
“And I thought that the cheapest thing I could do toward working up that sophomore, thesis would be to have you do the Cowper operation for me—right in front of my eyes—explain me every step—and I'd have the satisfaction of being able to describe graphically in the thesis how a master does it—and still have the skull afterward, for my later medical work. So—the question resolves itself—how much would you charge? To do it—on Yorick here?”
“Well,” he said, a bit flabbergasted, “I charge not less than $25—and all the way up to $100—for doing that operation on a living man.”
“Sure, Doctor—I don't doubt it. But this is different. For this chap isn't going to squirm around—and holler—and breathe up all your ether, or whatever you use for anaesthetic, and—”
He was reflecting deeply.
“Quite true, of course. Well, I'll do it for $15.”
“Oh, Doctor!—come—come! The fellow who advised my taking this operation as a thesis said it wouldn't—shouldn't—take over about 15 minutes—on a skull. I can't pay you at the rate of $6o an hour! For I haven't copped that Mexican lottery ticket yet, you know!”
“No, nor will,” he said, dourly.
“I'll pay $5, Doctor,” I put in. “That ought to be fair.”
“Not a chance,” he retorted firmly. “That would be a ridiculous fee.”
“Well—$10 is my limit,” I capitulated.
“No,” he said stubbornly. “$15.”
I rose, and reached for my wrapping paper. “I guess it's no sale,” I said sadly.
“Here,” he said hastily, “tell you what I will do. I'll split the difference—and do it on your skull for $12.50.”
I reflected. “It's still no sale,” I declared. “But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll split the present difference with you—in short, the price will be $11 flat. What's your answer.”
“But wait—a split of our difference is—$11.25”
“All right. $ 11.25 let it be.”
“Done!” he retorted hurriedly.
“Of course,” I explained, “I want the typically standard Cowper operation done?”
“Naturally,” was his somewhat testy answer. “There is only one. It's done with the alveolar combined burr and threading reamer. And it—but say—say—who's going to pay for the gold antrum tube?”
“Ouch!” I said. “I never thought of that.”
“Evidently not,” he retorted. “And I just forgot it myself, for the moment. Well—they cost $10 apiece.”
“Hm!” I said. And thought. “Well, I haven't captured the winning lottery ticket yet—however—okay, Doctor. My freshman year is beginning to run up, all right.”
“Oh, charge this on your books to your sophomore year. For—but say—by the way—who is the Professor of Third Year Pathology over there now?”
I looked him straight in the eyes.
“I don't know, Doctor. Being, as I said, only a freshm—'“
His face was red as a beet. He had stood up. And was pointing a finger at me.
“Spelvin, you're a damned liar—from start to finish—and you're no student at Illinois U Medical School. For the third year professor of pathology over there, as I happen to know, is the Freshman Dean who would have enrolled you.”
He folded his arms. “Now come out with the truth—or I'll turn you over to the pol-”
But the absence of any police in that office to turn me over to evidently struck him at that juncture of his words. And he amended them: “At least, I'll have nothing to do with you—or your job. Speak—and speak fast!”
Before, however, I had a chance to reply to this barrage of angry words, the door in the outer office opened. And, almost at once, in the doorway of the partition appeared a streetcar motorman in blue jacket and hat.
“'Scuse me, Doc,” he said, apologetically, “but you said you would take that little bone out of my nose this morning if I came in when I got off the run—remember, your telling me it should ought to be done before I sleep?”
“Yes. Yes, Barney. Yes.” But the doctor was still staring angrily at me.
And I answered him. Quietly.
“You win, just now, Doc—on every one of your statements. And in spite of which—I still want Yorick there Cowperized! In fact, I'm going to leave him with you on your desk there while I do something in the vicinity—something connected yes, with my chase for that lottery ticket. And while I'm gone Mr. Barney here can have his turbinate taken out. And I'll be back in an hour, Doc—and put all cards on the table.”
And with that I went out, and down into Clark Street. For there were, exactly as I had told MacPherson, many problems connected with the chase for that “lottery ticket”—and one in particular which, unless it were solved, meant that the $100,000 reward payable for the return of Gilrick Sandringham to the asylum before midnight could yet not be collectable by the one who returned him!
It was 20 minutes to 5 by the lighted clock atop Bush Bourse, the tall lemon-colored turreted office building across Chicago Avenue from MacPherson's non-palatial business quarters, and without a trace yet of dawn in the sky, when I stepped into the All-Night-Chain Cigar Store, across from MacPherson on Clark Street. Still thinking hard—not, however, at the summary way in which MacPherson had called my clumsy lie and my temporarily assumed identity- but of that most peculiar problem facing me in re Sandringham, First National Bank, et alia!
And, stepping in, marched squarely into an argument! A quite bitter argument, too—at least on one side! An argument between the lone red-headed night clerk and a tiny old
woman whose head came just above the counter and no more—a Chinese woman, of all things!—dressed in burlap, with a wisp of grey hair straggling across one oblique eye, and armed with a tray of shoestrings; one of those strange—yet always colorful!—female wrecks who are seen begging around every corner where there is the least suggestion of night life.
“B-b-but w'y I s'ood give you nickel back?” she was quavering, in English precise enough to indicate years, decades, of existence on this side of the Pacific, holding her wrinkled yellow fist tightly clenched on something. “I—I gave you my dime fo' this snuff—and—and the nickel change is—is mine.” And I noted a pitifully tiny box of cheap snuff held between the fingers of her other hand.
“Because, you old Chink fool,” the clerk was saying angrily, “I shouldn't have passed that nickel out. It's got a newsmatic value—and shouldn't have gone to you. So you just fork it back, old girl, or I'll —'
“B-but it belong to store, do it not?” the old woman was saying, plainly puzzled in spite of the slow mental workings of one of her age.
“Now listen here, old girl,” the clerk replied, with a warning menace in his tones, “I filtered that nickel out when I came on duty tonight and counted the cash—and I laid it on the marble slab of that there cash-register—till the 8 o'clock man comes on, who knows a man who knows all about coins. And how the hell I ever brushed it back into the till with my elbow as I got your damned snuff—I don't know. But the fact that 'twas in the dime section when I put your dime in—and the nickel ain't on the slab—then you got it. Now pass it back pronto, for I ain't handing out valuable coins to lousy old Chink
beggars like you, and don't intend to let you get out with it, either.”
“W-w-ell,” half blubbered the old woman, “if it worth sev'ral dollars—it—it seems like poor old Chiny Mary s'ood have half of them. Fo'—fo' it—it is my change. It is!”
“I beg pardon,” I put in, “but hearing the two of you speaking about coins—well—”
“Do you know anything about coins?” asked the clerk, more than belligerently.
“Well,” I said, “in view of the fact that collecting coins, and buying them and selling them and cataloguing them has been a hobby of mine—and a business of mine, too—for some years—I hope I do anyway. And—”
But saying no more, I drew a card from my vest pocket and extended it toward the clerk. I saw his eyes widen as they rested on the simple engraving:
Oliver Hinchley
Numismatist
Monon Building
He looked up, a changed man. “Well—for cripe's sake—are you Ollie Hinchley?”
“Just his ghost,” I said sardonically. “I'm not real at all. Just poke your hand out—and see it pass right through me.”
He grinned. “Why—Bill Howard, the 8 to 4 o'clock day man, says you're the last word in coins—and more so than even the catalogues.”
“Well,” was my answer, “Bill seems always to like to lay it on—like that. However, I'll forgive him, since, if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have known that right on this corner practised an eye, ear, nose and thro—but skip it! However, why not let me—rather, my ghost!—settle the argument here about the alleged value of this nickel that's under discussion?”
The old Chinese woman surveyed me troubledly as one trying to see if I were honest in the matter. And then, as though a bit overcome with curiosity herself, she opened her wrinkled saffron talons.
“There—there—Mister Ollie Hinch Lee—is the nickel. And is mine, I say, because he give it me in the change from my dime. If is worth something, then what is worth really belong to me. All of it. Am not I right?”
“Well,” I said, “yes and no—and no and yes. That's a deep question—under the circumstances. However, first—let's see the coin.”
I did not try to pick it off her hand—in fact, had I tried to do so, that hand would have closed on it like a trap. But I surveyed it, lying face uppermost on her seamed yellow palm. It was an ordinary Indian head nickel. No stigmata or aberrations, such as, for instance, the 16 feathers on the chief's headdress, which would have given it a value of $1150.
“Nothing there,” I said, more to both of them than to just her, “that makes it worth more than five cents.”
“But it's got—” began the red-headed clerk excitedly.
“Turn it over,” I ordered the old Chinese woman.
She turned it over, with the hand containing the snuff box. The other side of the nickel contained an arrow-head pointing at the current date.
“Was it this arrowhead,” I asked the clerk, “that made you hold it out?”
“Yes. For I saw right away that—”
“Well,” I interrupted, “the arrowhead nickel, of current date, is catalogued at $10.” And gave him a broad wink.
He seemed a little crestfallen. And then suddenly the wink seemed to percolate into him. At which he turned to the old lady.
“Well, old girl—if I split with you—give you half the value of the nickel—five big bucks—will you call our little argument settled?”
She was looking at the card which he had laid down, the hand holding it extended far out at arm's length from her oblique eyes—which denoted her presbyopia uncorrected by plus-lenses.
“Yes, I will. For I happen to know what a noomis-mat-ist is. Chinese Mary has not always been an old beggar bum. No sir. Once, 50 long years ago, was she queen of Chicago's Chinatown. And go through one whole year in white girls' high school. Now she is old beggar bum—yes—with not even her grandchildren living—but not—” And she straightened proudly up. “- not depend-ent, no, on her hardworking race that has troubles enough in self. And—but half is fair, for the $10 coming from nickel. And I will take my half.”
“Okay then—Queen! It's a dealt” And the clerk hurriedly counted her out her share of the $10—five worn ones from the till. Which she grasped, firmly, before she slid him over the nickel. And which nickel, this time, he
wrapped carefully in a bit of paper and slipped into his vest pocket.
The old woman, as one fearful that this fruitful compromise might be unexpectedly called off, had girded up her tray and slithered toward the door. In fact, she was already gone out into the pre-dawn darkness.
“Say—listen, Mr. Hinchley,” the clerk began, once she was out, “how much—”
“Fifty dollars,” I told him. “At least it catalogues at that—excepting in Burmeister's Catalogue—who class it at $60. However, all their valuations are too high—and the prices aren't actually obtainable in the market. I thought I'd protect your position by giving the coin some slight value—for if I hadn't given it any, her Imperial Highness wouldn't have believed me—and if I'd told the real truth, she'd never have given it up—and you'd have tried to grab it—and she'd have called in the police. And I'm inclined to say they'd have decreed the coin was hers. As it is, you've just lost ten per cent. No more than—well—appraisal commission!”
“You're right, at that,” he agreed. “About everything you describe is just about what would have happened.” He was radiant with happiness. “Well say—Mr. Hinchley—what can I do for you—for all you've done? Would a ten per cent commission to you be—”
I raised my hand. “I may make a winning—in a lottery before tonight,” I said cryptically. “In which case the commission wouldn't—anyway, I don't want it. As to what you can do for me, first, you might tell Bill Howard, when you go off duty and he comes on, that that info he gave me was okay. And second—I understand that a number of professional men around here are keeping all-night hours tonight—that's true, isn't it?”
“Yes, about 25 of 'em.”
“Is there a lawyer amongst them?”
“Yes. One.”
“Well, will you give me his name—that is, only if he's good?”
“This fellow is A No. I plus! And knows his stuff from A to Izzard—and back to A again. Only—you might prefer to wait till full morning—and get a regular attorney.”
“Regular attorney? What do you mean?”
“Well,” the clerk explained, “you know this corner here is known as All-Nations Corner. And this fellow—well—he's a Japanese.”
“A Jap, eh? Well to my mind there's nobody in the world smarter than a Jap—no matter what game he's in. Of course, in a ticklish law case to be tried in front of a jury, I don't think I'd want a Jap—the color of his skin might prejudice a couple of jurymen. But on pure consultation—well, this fellow will be quite okay—that is,” I added dubiously, “providing I can understand his English—and also providing he can grasp what I want to ask him about.”
“Grasp” laughed the other. “Say—he'll be two jumps ahead of you, on anything you ask him about. And as for your understanding him, if you were talking to him—with him back of a screen—you'd never even know you were talking to a Jap. This fellow was educated in American schools—and has had years of practice behind him in the white man's courts. Was married even—at least one time—to a white wife!”
“Okay,” I hastened to say. “Where can I find him?”
“Well, his name is Sato Okimo. And he's over there in room 310, Bush Bourse. No elevator, at this hour, but the stairway is near the door.”
“Thanks a lot,” I told him. “And that's all I want to know.”
And I went forth into Clark Street, smiling in spite of myself at the incident just completed in which I had made that greedy overbearing clerk pay a poor old Chinese woman derelict $5 for a nickel of current date worth no more than one-twentieth of that sum. For, as anyone who reads numismatic literature knows, no nickels whatsoever with that date on have values of over 25 cents.
But now for Mr. Sato Okimo, attorney-at-law—to state briefly the peculiar situation involving that reward money, and to get a more than valuable legal opinion. That reward money, that is—if earned! But first I crossed back over Clark Street and approached the newsboy from whose stand, temporarily unattended by him when I had passed it a few minutes earlier, I had gotten that Oliver Hinchley card!
The boy, a squat fellow with a wool cap, was making change, from a pocket that bulged with jingling coins, for a white-faced man who had a newspaper in his hand and looked as though he might be a dope-taker. In fact he moved off promptly, as though suspecting I was going to collar him.
“Paper, Mister?” said the boy.
“Listen, boy,” I began, “where were you—about ten minutes ago—when I passed here last?”
He rubbed his forehead. “Ten minutes ago? Oh yeah—I was in de rest'rant 'cross th' way gettin' some pie and coffee. Why?”
“Nothing. Only why don't you keep change here—right on the stand?”
He looked at me helplessly. “Change? You mean—oh yeah—I getcha—well hell, mister, these blokes around dese corners'd steal it. But why—”
“Well, it's your sales you lose,” I told him. “I stopped here while you were absent to buy a morning paper—but there wasn't hide nor hair change for the quarter I had. So I passed it up.”
“Well here I am now,” he declared hurriedly. And drew forth a paper.
But I waved it away.
“Too late now, boy. Won't have time. However, I don't want to jimmy up your business. And what I mean is, that I wanted to scribble you out a hot note asking why in hell you didn't leave change—and all I saw was a card lying back under the top of the stand, with a loose nail atop it. So I took the card to write on it—then decided to write what I had to say across the street in the cigar store where there was plenty of light. But here you are—so I'm telling it to you instead; only, about your card, I accidentally left it over there. So if it's anything—”
“Oh no—that's all right,” he said, friendly. “Dat's just a card left wit me by a gink who gits off de Clark Street car here now and den to see de day man in de cigar store. I know what's on de card—an' don't need it. Oliver Hinchley, and he's in de Monon Building. He's a guy dat buys coins. An' he wanted as I should keep my eye out for all pennies wit'—but—o' course dat's between him an' me.”
“Then,” I asked, “you don't need the card?”
“Naw—I know where's he's at. Monon Building.”
“Okay then,” I said, “we're all satisfied. And I'll be back for my paper later.”
With which I went across Chicago Avenue and into Bush Bourse by its Clark Street entrance.
As in MacPherson's place, I had to walk up. But here was a marble stepped stairway, with gilded railing. And even an open public phone on the second landing. Room 310 was lighted up. And it appeared that Mr. Sato Okimo, in agreeing to keep office hours all night this one night each week, had passed on to his office girl who was, incidentally, a white girl, the necessity of doing likewise. For she sat at a small desk in a blue-carpeted anteroom, very cross-looking—and very tired and sleepy-looking as well. She actually blinked as she gazed at me.
“How soon would I be able to consult Mr. Okimo?” I asked.
“Right away, I guess,” she said. “At least there's nobody in there now. However, I'll speak to him first. What is the name?”
“Well,” I said, “having had occasion to use a few pseudonyms this morning, I'll give my right name—now that I'm looking for legal advice. Ronald Sevrin.” And spelled it out for her.
She stared at me a bit bewilderedly.
“Just a minute, then, Mr. Sevrin,” she said. And rose.
She returned at once from a lighted inner office, the one wall of which visible when the door opened, was entirely covered with law books.
“Mr. Okimo will see you at once, Mr. Sevrin.”
I entered the door she held open for me, and she closed it gently upon me. A small but mighty comfortable office greeted me, with thick green carpet, three walls filled from ceiling to floor with open shelves and packed solid with law-books, and a flat-top desk. And, back of the desk, Mr. Sato Okimo himself, comfortably portly in spite of his under-size, and with iron-grey hair—a man at least 50 years of age, to my surprise. He was clad in a finely tailored yet conservative pin-stripe suit, and wore round tortoise-shell spectacles which, against his tightly-drawn parchment-like lemon-colored Japanese skin, looked like nothing so much as a pair of spectacles perched on a skull.
“Be seated, Mr. Sevrin,” he said, with not even the microscopic iota of an accent, and shoving out a mahogany chair.
“Only my name,” I replied, dropping down into it, “happens not to be Ronald Sevrin!”
“Indeed?” He looked at me suspiciously.
“Why—well what-”
“The name is—but to you only, Mr. Okimo—Arthur Taynor.”
“Taynor?” he ejaculated, raising his brows. “Not related by any chance to Miss—”
“To your office girl? No. But because I saw the little sign on her desk reading 'Miss Taynor' is why I dodged immediately the delightful but long-drawn-out process of trying to discover mutual ancestors—and so gave her the name of Sevrin. I'm not related to her, I think. For there are thousands of Taynors.”
He nodded. And a pause fell between us.
“And what can I do for you then, Mr. Taynor?”
“I need an exact answer to a legal problem,” I told him.
“Very well. State your problem,” he ordered.
“I will,” I replied. “Only,” I made haste to explain—and perhaps a bit too fluently, for the Okimo man, as it appeared shortly, was one who could not only read between lines—but almost between letters, “it isn't my problem! It's—it's that of a friend. See? Please consider that I myself am here only representing—sub-rosa—this friend and client. Who—well—what shall I call this—”
“Call him Mr. X,” he said airily. And from the very incisiveness with which he gave the gender to X, it was plain that he had solved in his mind a certain equation and that it ran, “X = Arthur Taynor.”
“Good enough,” I was saying. “X it is! Well, seven years ago X signed a note. A judgment note for $100,000. And—”
He broke in on me puzzledly.
“This appears, Mr. Taynor, to be a large matter. Involving sums like that. And inasmuch as you—ahem!—are acting for a party remaining unknown, do you object to—well—at least identifying yourself? And also to stating who recommended you to me—and perhaps also just why you come in at this hour?”
“Not at all,” I assured him promptly, wondering just what he would say when he would learn that the signer of that note had not been worth $100 when the note was signed. “And to all three questions,” I added. “As for myself—” I withdrew my notebook from my pocket as I spoke. “But first, however, why I'm here at this hour. I stopped off on this corner tonight to see a man—who works nights. Or was working tonight. Having been detained myself from around midnight till the small hours at a downtown hotel, waiting for a party who's registered there to show up. Purely a matter of business, that. And, seeing my man in this neighborhood, I dropped into the cigar store across the way. Wondering whether even to think of going to bed, now that the dawn was so near. And having heard that a lot of you professional men around here were holding all-night hours this night each week, I asked the clerk whether there was any lawyer amongst them. He gave me your name. So—instead of waiting till tomorrow to get information in behalf of my friend—I decided to forego further sleep—and get it for my friend now. And now, about identifying myself—” And flipping back the cover of my notebook, I passed it over to him.
He read off aloud the printed and written contents. “IN CASE OF ACCIDENT, MY NAME IS Arthur Taynor. RESIDENCE: Capeley Hotel, Englewood. EMPLOYED AS Optometrist with George Shultz Optical Company, 417 W. Madison Str—” He looked
up eagerly. “Say, are you an optometrist? I wish you'd tell me what the devil is wrong with my right eye tonight—everything it looks at is blurred?”
“That,” I warned him, “is a problem for an oculist—say—the oculist across the street? I'm only an optometrist.”
“Oh yes. I see. There is a difference, of course. I suppose I will have to see MacPherson then.”
“Is that his name?” I asked blandly. “His office building doesn't look like any palace.”
“No. He's a Grade-A man plus—but with a Grade-Z respect for his profession and calling. And—however, after you've left, I'll drop in on him and have him look at the eye.” He slid me back my notebook, satisfied. I was staring at his two oblique eyes.
"But let's see,” I put in. “You say the eye has been fogging all evening. Neither eye there looks red or inflamed. So it can't be the—let me see your spectacles, Mr. Okimo.”
Okimo plucked off his spectacles and handed them to me. I squinted at the right lens against the juncture of floor and wall. And rocked it gently. Then examined it, at the point of the glass nearest the nose bridge. After which, I turned the lens slightly but forcibly in its frame. Cleaned it off gently with a corner of my tie. And handed it back to him. “Try it on,” I ordered, “and you'll see—magic!”
He did so. His lemon-colored face was delighted. “Why—my eye is all clear again—why—”
“It happens,” I explained to him patiently, “that you're wearing a cylindrical lens—instead ' of a spherical one—in that eye. About—well—I 3/4 diopters—and plus. Those plus ones, of that strength, fog the eye if they become revolved even a few degrees. Which that one happened to be. After this, if your eye ever fogs unexplainably, check up—and see that the tiny etched point on the rim of the glass lens lies right against the tiny etched notch on the tortoise-shell frame. That means that the cylinder is then lying in the proper position to correct the astigmatism which happens to be in that eye. That's all. And I guess I've cheated your friend MacPherson out of an office call.”
“You sure have,” Okimo responded, highly pleased. He cast his corrected gaze delightedly about the room. Then leaned back satisfiedly in his chair.
“Well, let's see, now, Mr. Taynor—getting back to your—I mean X's—problem. X, you say, signed a judgment note for $100,000- 7 years ago? Which means he must have been worth at least—”
“$100—more or less,” I told him promptly. “So you see this isn't quite the big-time case you thought it was! However, Lord knows it's vital enough—for my friend. Yes! But as to this note. It was signed by X, at the request of X's father—then living—now dead—who knew and had gone to school with a certain banker here, and in fact was under some slight obligation to this banker. Sufficiently so that this banker came to X's father one day 7 years ago, and asked him whether X, since X—fortunately for such matter—was worth nothing, couldn't sign him a large accommodation note. For purely temporary use.”
“Who was the banker?” Okimo asked.
“Well—this is confidential,” I warned. “But you will have to have it. His name is Alfred Bentley. Or if you don't object to hearing bank presidents mentioned facetiously—Five-o'Clock Bentley!”
“Alfred Bentley?” the Japanese lawyer exclaimed. “Well, you sure are striking close to my home base. For Bentley is president of the Upper North Michigan Avenue bank where I bank myself. It's a new bank—and a new post for him. He used to be president of the North Broadway Bank which recently coalesced with some larger bank up north.”
“Yes,” I answered. “That's correct.”
“But—Five o'Clock Bentley?” Okimo asked, curiously. “How—where does that—”
“According to X,” I told him briefly, “Bentley has made it a practice to rise every morning of his life, bar none, at five in the morning. I myself, however, am the author of the appellation.”
“I see,” Okimo nodded, with a smile that was plainly directed more at the meticulous way in which I kept myself and X separated than at my description of the bank president's habits. His smile slowly faded. “But now about this note again?”
“Well,” I went on, “this judgment note for a hundred thousand dollars, signed by X at the request of X's father—and given Bentley by X's father—was to have been used in connection with the affairs of that no-longer existing bank you just mentioned.”
“I see,” Okimo nodded again. “Well, that year banks were stuffed with everything from real estate bonds to pink feather ticking. So I don't wonder at your facts.” He paused a second. “Do you happen to know exactly how this note was to have been used—by Bentley?”
“Yes. According to X's father's later explanation to X, the loan of the note to Bentley was so that the latter could swear to some statement of assets—and yet not commit perjury—for the note, since X had nothing, wouldn't have served as collateral to pass a bank examiner.”
“Yes. That's right, of course. And now, go on with the story.”
“Well, X's father died, shortly after this episode. Died quite broke—for his little home was foreclosed on him. Nothing was left to X. But after X, in checking over amongst his personal papers left, failed to find the canceled note—X called Bentley up—and asked him about that specific piece of accommodation paper.”
“And what did Bentley say?” asked Okimo.“He said: 'Oh—didn't your father get to tell you about that note, before he died? For I told him, of course. My parrot—here at the house where I kept the note after I utilized it—dragged the note off a table one day into his cage, and ate it up. So it's quite out of the picture now—for good and all.' And,” I concluded, “X foolishly believed that story.”
“Then you—that is, X!—know positively it isn't true” Okimo asked frowningly.
“I—and X both!” I said with a smile, “know that the story's false. And this is the why and how of that,” I went on. “About five years later, a girl—a girl with secretarial ability—who wanted a job, asked X for a possible tip as to where to find one. From various things X knew about Bentley being very cantankerous with his help—always firing and hiring—X told this girl to try Bentley—figuring that somebody probably had just been bounced or was about to be. And this girl actually got a job with Bentley as sort of a sub-secretary. But one afternoon later she called up X: And said: 'Good heavens, X, how on earth does it come that a note of yours—for $100,000- is amongst Bentley's private papers—in his home—and kept in a little safe in his bedroom?'
“X,” I went on, “thunderstruck, wanted to know the full details. Well, it appears Bentley had been laid up at home a few days in bed. And this girl, a sort of confidential helper to him—as I implied—at the bank, had gone over to his house with some papers he wanted. And Bentley, convalescing, was sitting up in bed. His safe open. And with a lot of miscellaneous papers lying around on the counterpane. And—right in view of this girl's eyes—this identical note.”
“What did X tell his girl friend?” Okimo asked, promptly.
“X told the girl the very facts I'm now telling you. X wasn't particularly perturbed—being worth quite nothing—so Bentley couldn't ever attempt to collect anything on the note.”
“No—but listen—I don't understand Bentley holding on to that note.”
“Neither did X,” I said. “But the reason for that wasn't long in coming to X. X's father, you see, was a bit of a romancer. And in a letter he had written to Bentley, he had foolishly bragged that X would more than likely inherit a huge estate some day, from a certain relative—a person quite famous and well-known, the country over—but whom he wisely—or unwisely!—left unnamed. Just romancing—about his only chee-ild, see? Doesn't that sort of present the reason? Namely, that Bentley figures—whether wrongly or rightly—that in case he ever reads in the legal papers or newspapers of such inheritance—to take a $100,000 cut out of it? By putting in that note for collection—against it.”
“The unscrupulous, sly dog,” said Okimo. “I'm going to quit banking with that rascal—if it's the last thing I ever do.”
“You can do as you like about that,” I informed him. I paused. “Well, this girl, who'd conveyed the vital information to X, was killed the next night in a taxicab crash. hand the morning after her death a letter from her—to X—arrived. She'd been over to Bentley's house again the afternoon before, on business. And that time, in looking in his personal correspondence files for him, took occasion to look also under X's father's name. Smart girl, see? And had found the letter in which he'd foolishly made that brag—about the wealth coming to X. And so she 'snaked' the letter out—and sent it to X—so that X would know the motive of why X's note was being surreptitiously kept. But, as I say, the girl died that night. And X alone became holder of the secret that X's $100,000 accommodation note was not destroyed at all by Bentley's parrot. And was still in existence. In Bentley's private safe—in his own bedroom.”
“Did X go and call Bentley soundly on the whole thing?”
“No. X knew there would only be stout denials—about the note, that is. For the girl who'd seen it had died. X was rather amused, to tell the truth, to see the poor fool banker holding on to a note—on the mere story of a romancing father. For there is quite no relative, I assure you, anywhere—from whom X can inherit anything.”
I paused a moment.
“In fact, the foregoing is the very crux of the legal problem that is now put up to you, Mr. Okimo. In short, it is this: Can Bentley collect—on that note—in case X ever does—get anything?”
“Yes,” Okimo said firmly. “He can. For the note is valid—with not a witness extant but X's father that it is an accommodation note—however, that letter X's father wrote to Bentley—does that mention the note?”
“No,” I said. “And besides—has been destroyed.”
“My God, Taynor—never, never destr—that is, tell your friend X never to destroy papers—of any kind! Even if they don't seem to have any value.” Okimo stopped. “Well, that settles it then. The note stands paramount to all statements against it. However,” he broke off, “you say you—that is, X—has nothing? Then why worry? The note will outlaw itself—in 3 more years. And then—”
“Ah!” I replied. “There comes the rub! For because of certain things transpiring in the last 24 hours, X has reason to believe that—no, let me put it just that I have reason to believe that X may possibly be able to return Gilrick Sandringham to the insane asylum. If you know who Gil—”
“The devil you say! Gilrick Sandringham? He wanted me to help defend him from the charge of insanity—at the time his friends were putting him in the asylum. Sane as he appears on the surface, I saw, the minute I talked with him, over at the Psychopathic Hospital lockup, that he probably had a dozen bugs that would come out—in court. So I politely declined. So you think you can—of course the thing that's transpired in the last 24 hours in your—that is, in X's—affairs must be yesterday's newsstory? And you must have seen in that newsstory that Sandringham's dead?”
“Probably so—yes. But according to other things—” I broke off. “I'm wondering though, Mr. Okimo, whether before noon tomor—that is, today—I'll see streamers across all the noon papers reading 'Lawyer's Client Reveals—”
“No you won't,” said Okimo. And there was a grim note of absolute finality and truth in his voice. “Quite aside from professional ethics, I wouldn't, I don't mind telling you—for the whole hundred thousand dollars in that note you speak of!—want to see myself set forth in the newspapers as one made a fool of by a client who was—well—all wet. For frankly, how on earth can you—listen, my friend, let's get down to solid earth here—and also brass tacks. In short, let's drop 'X' out of this conversation. What I mean is, let's agree now, just between the two of us, that you speak of yourself as 'I.' Will you do that?”
“Surely—surely. Maybe I have been too algebraic at that! But speaking of myself as I is the easiest thing I do.”
“Good. Well, then, Taynor, what—in rough—is the evidence that Sandringham is alive?”
“Well,” I told Okimo, “for one thing I was in Sandringham's company after the date of his death—given in yesterday morning's story as September 25th. That story, incidentally, I never saw till after midnight tonight. But you'll naturally ask now how I know I was in his company—and not somebody else's? Well, I might say that if a certain face I've gazed on didn't tally with the face given in yesterday morning's Sun, then no pea ever remotely resembled another pea. But you're a lawyer. And you'll ask: what conclusive proof have I that this possible double—was Sandringham. Well—this last I prefer to keep secret, but, if you want to know it—it cinches the matter.”
“I see. Of course that word 'cinch' is a thing of wide latitude! At any rate you know, do you not, that that reward offer expires at midnight tonight?”
“Yes—from reading the paper. Yes.”
“And you know also that the reward is non-assignable?”
“So I also noticed in the paper. That very word was what sent me scuttling up here—before I did anything—about that hundred-thousand-dollar note matter. For I sort of perceived, right off the bat, complications rolling upon complications! Hundred-thousand-dollar reward—but hundred-thousand-dollar note out. Reward unassignable—hence maybe something that couldn't be passed under the table to a confederate with one hand—while the other hand thumbed itself at Alfred Bentley.”
“That's quite correct. In the first place, you're quite right in assuming that collecting that reward wouldn't be something that could be done at the asylum door. There would be lots of red tape to be untangled, papers to be filled out—there would be publicity—whatnot. It would be several days before the money was paid. In short, there would be no running off with the money—and leaving this note-holder holding his note. Long before the money was handed over to you officially, judgment would be secured on that note—a mere matter of five minutes—and a bailiff would have an attachment on that hundred thousand over at the bank. For, under a recent ruling of the Supreme Court
on a parallel case, the non-assignability of that reward money makes it not possible to transfer the rights in it—and hence leaves it directly attachable by your very good friend Bentley. However, regardless of what this secret factor is that cinches the man you saw in the last 17 or 18 days or so as Sandringham—what is it you have—just roughly, that is, Taynor, by which you can go straight to him? Or rather, lead the police to him?”
“A confidential telephone number,” I replied promptly, “which he gave a certain party—not knowing he was being overheard doing so: a telephone number where, he said, he could be reached, day or night, for many weeks—in fact, months—to come. In short, between you and me, Mr. Okimo, he intended to hide where that number was.”
“And you overheard this—and have that number?” Okimo asked promptly.
I shook my head firmly. “Yes—and no. That is, I did not get the number he gave. I happen to know only the number to whom he was talking—and to know definitely from the conversation that the number he gave the man on the other end was carefully put down; and on what kind of a record book as well; so it's merely up to me, you see, to trace down the party who was on the other end of that wire—and then, having done that, 'snake' the secret number where Sandringham is hiding.”
Mr. Sato Okimo looked a bit overwhelmed at what seemed to be the undecisiveness of my hold on matters.
“Well,” he asked, “were you able to garner, with any degree of certainty, that the phone number was definitely a Chicago number?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I was. Definitely l Not that that would make any difference, as I understand it, so far as the legal rights go of having him taken up. For I of course read in the papers myself, six months or so back, how a lunatic of one state is now extraditable from any state in the Union. So even if that number were one just outside the state line—it's gilt-edged. I don't say, however, that I might not have to step across the state line—to find the party who was on the other end of that wire. No!”
If Okimo had looked a bit overwhelmed a minute or so ago, at what seemed to be the undecisiveness of my hold on matters, he looked even more so now. So I hastened to put in a question which was of more importance to me.
“But now that I've told you so much, Mr. Okimo, let me say that I know absolutely nothing about the conviction of Gilrick Sandringham to the asylum. Just who he is—and why—and all that. And I'm wondering whether all that might have taken place on or about—but do you know the date that he was committed—and when the resultant publicity must have taken place?”
“Yes,” he replied. “For my wife—ahem—my white wife—and I, alas, were in the divorce courts then. It was May 11th to 15th, five years ago.”
“Oh-oh!” I said. “That explains much. For I was in a hospital, with a draining appendix, on those dates—before, and after. And not reading newspapers—you may lay to that.”
“And where were you,” he asked, “when Sandringham escaped? And there was more publicity?”
“That of course,” I said, “would be September 13th. I was ill then, also—with a fever that felt like 118 degrees. In fact, however, if you want to know where I met up with Sandringham, we were both in a little, obscure, private hospital—lone patients therein—lying in adjoining beds. And he—well, he was shot through the arm. A flesh wound however—that is all”
“But good heavens,” said Okimo, “wouldn't this hospital have reported such a case to the police?”
“Not this hospital,” I replied. “For three reasons. Four, perhaps. First, its location—outside the county police regulations. Secondly—certain strange religious views held by the nuns who run it. Thirdly—the fact that no newspapers enter it. Yes, part of the religious aspect again. And fourthly—Sandringham took French leave.”
“And so he was winged after all?” Okimo queried. “The night he escaped, a railroad detective reported that he shot at a tramp near Birkdale—and that the fellow got away in the darkness on a moving train.”
“Well, not maybe winged—but clipped a bit,” I said. “And afraid to death of a fatal infection. Or loss of the arm. And then after he got in there, afraid to get out. At least till a certain party, with whom he could presumably hide, got back to Chicago from somewhere in the West. That latter I got from the telephone conversation I overheard.” I paused. “However, what is his bug? For though I happen to know now this fellow was Sandringham, I must say he didn't appear to be downright nuts to me.”
“Nor to me either,” said Okimo, “when I first met him. Outside, maybe, of one peculiar crack he made to myself and Dr. Gregg Purvis, the famous alienist, who was called over there to the Psychopathic by someone back of the scenes to look Sandringham over. Sandringham made us both wait for him while he shaved. And wouldn't talk to either of us till he got all clean shaven. Then he told us calmly that he always gave a fresh start to his beard—every 6 months—and on the same day. Same hour.”
“Too bad,” I commented, “that the officials didn't snap a photo of him then and there. For though I saw him bearded—I've no doubt whatever that he's plenty clean shaven now—renewal date—or no renewal date!”
“Doubtlessly,” assented Okimo nodding. “However, you ask what his brand of lunacy was. Well, he was convicted of being a paranoiac. Which diagnosis was altered later to homicidal paranoia—after he gave utterance in the asylum to the statement that if he could ever get out once—for but a few hours—he intended to kill the trustees off one by one as fast as possible—until he was captured or killed.”
“Why did he have it in so for the trustees7” I asked. “They didn't commit him, did they?”
“No. But the reason was that at one time the former asylum superintendent asked whether they would sign a petition to the courts to liberate Sandringham on parole as a harmless crank. Which they refused—one and all—to do; for it seems that one of the last things he did—while sane—was to try to find legal loopholes in his father's will and trustee arrangements by which they could all be ousted—from five thousand a year apiece!—and he could pick his own trustees. They felt that it was better he do—well—non-legal reading—in the asylum—than legal reading—outside!”
“Were there no people at his trial who testified him as sane?” I asked.
“Oh yes—one or two,” Okimo told me. “Honest people, I guess. People who worked for him. But their opinion didn't count. The one person of all the witnesses whose opinion would have been final and worth more than all uttered was not called to the stand. I refer to Dr. Gregg Purvis of 25 E. Washington Street and indisputably the biggest alienist in the world—and certainly the only honest one—since he never takes a fee for testifying, and never gives an interview to a newspaper. But he wasn't called to the stand by either side. For neither side knew how he would testify. And his testimony would have swung the entire case. Had he declared Sandringham sane but eccentric, Sandringham would have been freed. If he had declared Sandringham to be touched—Sandringham was sure to go to the asylum. As of course he did go. But Gregg Purvis was not called.”
I nodded. “Well, I'm not yet sold myself on the fact that Sandringham is a nut,” I said troubledly. “I hope he is—if I'm to have something to do with sending him back. And since that's the situation confronting me—do you mind giving me the whole lowdown on the man I'm to return? Who he is—his people—and so forth'“
“Not at all. He was the only son of Rufus Sandringham, widower, and real estate man and financier, here in Chicago. Sandringham piled up a million dollar fortune, mostly in real estate, however. When he died, he left his estate in the form of a trust, never to be given Gilrick—or turned over to him—during his life, for it seems Gilrick was considerable of a spendthrift. Gilrick was to receive $5,000 a year income—and the estate was to go, at his death, to his child or children if he ever had any: and if not, to whatever far distant Sandringhams there might be. Six trustees were named as managers of the trust—with power to appoint new trustees to take the place of any who died or resigned. All the original six of course are still in charge, for their jobs are sinecures—nothing to do—since they have the right to hire clerks and officials to carry on the actual work of estate management. It's this identical cowardly outfit who went loco when Sandringham escaped and immediately pledged that huge reward for him. And you know the rest yourself from our conversation. Sandringham developed sufficient battiness—or call it eccentricity, or call it lunacy—to. get committed to Birkdale Asylum there five years back. There had been many escapes about that time from private institutions—and the sitting county judge decreed that Sandringham should go to a state one. So to Birkdale—County of Kaskawa, State of Illinois—he went! And the trustees have since carried on his estate—and no doubt will till each draws his last breath.”
I nodded. “But just how is it,” I asked, leaning forward, “that these trustees could appropriate $100,0000 of Sandringham's own estate as a reward for his capture?”
“Because,” Okimo explained, “there was a clause in his father's combined will and trust arrangement which specified something like the following: 'If ever my son is rendered incompetent by disease, accident, drink, drugs or amnesia, and under such conditions wanders away from any hospital or place of safe keeping, or if he should become abducted, the trustees shall have the right to appropriate from the estate—as reward or ransom for him—any sum up to $100,000' “
“And they lost no time?” I queried, “appropriating the full sum—when he flew the coop?”
“Right! A cowardly outfit, as I said. I know Goffman personally, and I know L. Verrill Meyrenfield. When Sandringham sawed his way out of—you see, some plumber—Patrick Groogan was his name—was sent out to Birkdale by the American Plumbing Company here on Lake Street to make a trial installation of some new patent device to be used ultimately on less intelligent wards than the one where Sandringham was: some device to shut off water automatically after it had run 2 minutes. And Sandringham managed to filch a hacksaw from Groogan's kit and secrete it. And since his particular work on his ward was to help keep the transfer records, he waited the time of his escape till the night before the new day and night attendants came on duty. They found a forged transfer of him to one of the outlying cottages, dated apparently the evening before. And so his flight wasn't discovered for two days. For he'd sawed two bars from his window during those few evenings he'd waited, and done it so cleanly that, before he did finally drop from the sill to the turf far below, he'd stuck the bars back in place with soap and lampblack.
“At the moment,” Okimo went on, “that his escape did come to light and made all the papers, Mr, Groogan—looking into a side pocket in his work kit where he carried a loaded revolver because of labor difficulties—found that gone, as well as the extra hacksaw. And that made the papers immediately. And right then and there, these six trustees—thanks to the fact that Sandringham had always said that if he ever got out he intended to kill several of them—and thanks to the yellow streaks up all their backs, voted immediately all the liquid cash then in the estate, up to the full amount permitted them—to see that Gilrick was returned. After which, I imagine, they all took a trip!”
“Coming back,” I ventured, “only when Sandringham putatively was blown to bits?”
“Doubtlessly!”
“Well, was he armed?” I asked. “For this fellow I met up with certainly was not toting any gun or—”
“No, he wasn't really armed,” Okimo explained. “For another newsstory, a few days later, proved to be a statement from the plumber's wife. She returned from a trip—and hearing all the commotion—announced that she had taken the revolver from her husband's kit—to avoid any labor shooting. So the trustees, you see, had been unduly alarmed—but the money was then up—and in escrow.”
“And what is this about Sandringham being killed near Gill City, Nebraska?”
“Just,” Okimo replied, “that an unknown tramp trying to get into a railroad construction shanty there, on a certain date—my birthday, incidentally, for it was September 25th—was blown into absolute bits. All they found was two feet and one squashed eyeball with, however, a brown iris. The feet had mottled Birkdale socks on—but with the red threads plucked out—marking them indisputably, so it was said, as Sandringham's. So the fellow was identified as the missing Sandringham.”
“The police,” I commented, “were infants. They ought to have known Sandringham would have thrown such socks away, once out. And put on some pair of ordinary ones he probably took with him. And this brown-eyed tramp plainly picked up the discarded socks and put them on.” I leaned back. “Well, that explains all that can be explained, I guess. He's alive—and yours truly has a chance to take him.”
“Through a telephone number,” Okimo commented, with a dubious shrug of his shoulders. “Providing you find the man—who has the number. Etc. Etc. Aren't you maybe a little optimistic, Taynor?”
“Yes—sure I am,” I agreed. “Because there's quite a problem in that matter alone. Not to omit the one about this $100,000 note outstanding. Which I'd say is the real problem.”
“And that,” Okimo said with a glance at the clock on his desk, “is the only problem that I, your lawyer, can answer. And my answer is as follows: Get it all clear now, Taynor. Either you must buy that judgment note off—for little or nothing—since Bentley has no inkling of all you've told me. Of, if you can't do that—well—Hmph!—you'll have to—well—purloin it out of his home—for you have an ethical right there, if not a legal one! If you can't do either, then you might as well figure to see a hand reach in toward that reward—in case your hand goes out toward it.”
“I see,” I nodded. “Well, I'm not a lawyer—and so I was hoping that your opinion might be that the note, for some reason I didn't see, wasn't worth the paper it was written on.” I paused, reflecting. “Then the answer is: Buy it off, or—him? Buy it off? Well, I might try it, at that. Since it's apparently worthless. And if that proves n. g.-then—well, of course I might try, as you suggest half facetiously, to steal it! Except that he keeps it locked in a safe in his bedroom. And not being a cracksman—” I shook my head. “I'm afraid I'll have to evolve some new unheard-of method for making a safe door open.” I saw him gaze at his desk clock again. So I rose hastily. “Well, it's a quarter after 5—and dawn coming. And I've a man yet to see around here—who's waiting for me. Though he will wait—for he's bursting with curiosity. So—how much do I owe you, Mr. Okimo?”
He rubbed his hands. “That will be—er—$10.”
“Ouch! Just a bit high—considering that—however—” I opened my wallet and tendered him the ten.
He took it avariciously. And rose promptly.
“Shall I see you again?” he asked.
“I rather fear you will,” I said. “For if Bentley won't part with that note, I'll have to—as you say—snitch it—blow his safe—or something! And if I try to do either of those things, I'm quite likely to get caught—in which case I'll be calling on you—to defend me.”
“That's quite okay,” he said solemnly. “I do criminal practice.”
And I bowed myself hastily out.
And passed Miss Taynor, fast asleep, for her head lay on her outstretched arm.
The moment I got to that open phone downstairs on the second landing, I looked about me for a telephone book. There was none. So I dialed Information, and asked:
“What is the present street address of Gustav Shrik, whose business address would be the Logan Square Bank?”
I waited. And Information finally answered:
“3030 Logan Boulevard. And the phone is Divers—”
“I don't need that,” I said.
And turned from the phone. To find no other than Miss Taynor coming down the stairs in back of me. She looked practically asleep on her feet. But somnolence or no somnolence, she was evidently on the way to the women's room to powder her nose. She rubbed her eyes and managed to give me a sleepy smile as she was about to pass. But I stopped her.
“Miss Taynor, when you go back upstairs, will you give Mr. Okimo a message?”
She yawned openly in spite of herself. “Oh—pardon me, Mr. Sevrin. I'm half asleep. What did you—oh, Mr. Okimo? Yes, what message, Mr. Sevrin?”
“Tell him just, Miss Taynor, that the entire ' case I just presented him about the $100,000, judgment note is correct—and true—in all particulars. But that the $100,000 reward doesn't deal with the escaped Sandringham—but with a matter of—of—yes—of a winning Irish sweepstakes ticket. Yes. Tell him also that the name ', I gave him is false—for that notebook I showed him, I picked up in the Loop last night. Yes. Tell him I won't be back, ever, because a man who'll charge a prospective client—worth maybe $100,000—$10, is too much on the make to keep as a lawyer—in case I win out—on this sweepstakes ticket.”
“We-ell,” she said. “Well—sure—I'll tell him all that. But—”
“And oh yes,” I added, “tell him one more thing. That there won't be any use for him to call up Bentley and tip him off to freeze tight to that note—since the banker isn't Bentley! Not! I got that name off the bank deposit book lying right on your desk tonight. Be sure to tell him that, too.”
“I will,” she said, bewilderedly. And turned back, giving up her prerogative of powdering her nose.
I went downstairs and was just in time to hop into a Checker taxicab, which I ordered to take me to Logan Square. For the banker from whom I intended to inquire—at this unseeming hour between 5 and 6 in the morning—on the matter of exactly what he would sell a worthless hundred thousand dollar note for—was Gustav Shrik—and he was president of the Logan Square Bank, and not the Upper North Michigan Avenue Rank at all. And, moreover, possessed the identical, quaint rising habits that I had attributed to one Alfred Bentley! And I figured, after I had seen him—whether he played chess with himself at this early hour, or dug garden in a window box!—and I should then go back and clear off a certain curious matter with MacPherson with respect to the odd errand that had brought me to these corners—it would be up to me to concentrate my activities for the coming day more or less upon a single problem, namely whether the greatly prized paranoiac of Birkdale Asylum could—before midnight!—be delivered back to their door in handcuffs, strait-jacket—or what have you!
I had, as I say, told the taxi driver to take me to Logan Square—and not to 3030 Logan Boulevard. For two good reasons. First, Logan Boulevard ran directly out of Logan Square. And that number 3030 indicated that Gustav Shrik lived, just now, as should all good bankers, close to his business. My second reason—well—I didn't know what sort of argument by some mischance might ensue between myself and Shrik—and it was just as well not to pile up witnesses—in court! If—and so.
It took us only about 15 minutes to reach Logan Square, a rectangular green parklet with a great tall stone column towering over the half dozen or so streets which intersected there. I paid the Checker driver off, and then walked slowly back along Logan Boulevard; I had no fears of being questioned as a suspicious character, for it was now 5 minutes to 6 in the morning, and people, here and there, were about.
Number 3030 proved to be the Shannley Bachelor Apartments. A quite regal-looking building with a single entrance, and containing 6 apartments. I could see, thanks to the beautifully landscaped vacant lot to one side of it, that the building was very deep; so each apartment must have contained many, many rooms. A single archway, with leaded green-glass side windows, marked the entranceway, which was on the exact level of the sidewalk.
I went in. Shrik's apartment was the middle one on the left. I pondered a moment wondering how loud he would roar if today, of all days, he was not “Five o'Clock Shrik,” as I had dubbed him. Then I pressed the button. I was not rousing any household, for a man's voice answered almost at the first ring.
“ 'Ullo?” he inquired. “'Oo's ringin?”
“The name is Judd. Wheatley Judd. And I want to speak to Mr. Shrik on a very important matter. Which will take only about 2 minutes of his time.”
“Well, 'e's allus h'up—so 'e could speak to yer if he was satisfied yer bus'ness was legit'mate. 0'ny—this morning he 'int 'ere. A little matter o' somethin' tykin' plyce h'outside o' Chicago. This is his valet speakin'.”
I could feel my face fall clear to the vestibule
floor.
“Not—there?” I said blankly. “Out of town?” I repeated. “Say—will you put somebody on the tube there who can tell me whether he's very far from Chicago—and when he'll be back—and some other things?”
“Oh, h'I didn't s'y 'e was h'out o' town. An' as for puttin' somebody else on this 'ere tube, there 'int nobody else in this flat to put on; and there won't be nobody—cook nor 'ousemyde—till tomorrow noon. I'm his valet—and I can tell you all you need to know. And am tellin' you. I said, sir, 'e wasn't 'ere because of a little somethin' tykin' plyce h'outside o' Chicago. W'at I meant is that e's goin' to Burlington, Iowa, at eight o'clock to attend his 'alf-sister's funeral wot tykes plyce there at 4 tod'y. And 'e wown't be back till midnight tonight—or mybe I A.M. tomorrow. An' I'm packin' our things now. For I'm goin' with 'im. And 'e's over at the bank now, tykin' care o' some h'ur-gent matters.”
“Ah—good. I could get in over there, I suppose, to talk to him?”
“Not h'unless, sir, the night watchman, wot would be posted on the sidewalk in front of the doors, was satisfied it's owk'y—and will let you in.”
“Okay—and fine I” I said. “I'll go right over there now.”
And I left the Shannley Bachelor Apartments promptly.
And back to the Square. Where I found the bank easily enough, a brand new structure of modern stone, standing next to one of the old-time banks, with tall fluted stone columns, which had obviously failed in the bank failure days, and was still for rent.
And, as the valet had said, a burly night-watchman standing, with arms folded, at the doors, pistol in holster at waist.
I came up to him. He eyed me coolly, but not in the least suspiciously.
“I was just talking with Mr. Shrik's valet,” I told him, “and he informed me that I would find Mr. Shrik at the bank here.”
“Yes, he's here. But you can't go in there. Not before banking hours, anyway.”
“Hm. It's mighty vital that I have an answer from Mr. Shrik immediately—on a certain matter. A business matter.”
“Does it have to be today?”
“And—how! Must be right now, in fact.”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. Then replied.
“Well, you can stay out here—and I'll go in and ask him if he's willing to talk to you. That's him way back under that desk light—in Teller Booth No. 6.”
I peered through the darkened bank and, far at the farther end of the long foyer, back of a grating, I could make out Shrik's close-cropped square German head, showing his 55 years, leaning forth over some ledgers or something.
“And what is the message?” the nightwatchman asked, hand on knob of door, key in other hand.
“Just tell him that Lloyd Henan wants 2 minutes with him.”
He went inside, locked the door behind him, and went way back. I saw him talk with Shrik, then return.
“He said,” the nightwatchman told me, once he was outside, “that he hasn't the right to let anybody in at this hour—but you can write out your business—and I'll take it back.”
With which he produced a blank sheet of bank stationery and a pencil.
So I leaned the paper against the smooth stone wall next door, and wrote out my message. And read it in the early morning light. It ran:
Dear Mr. Shrik;
How much cash on the nail would you ask for a certain worthless $100,000 note you now hold? And which, as you certainly must realize, is worth nothing to you—else you'd have collected on it long ago.
If you care to name a small cash price to cancel that paper out of the picture, name it and oblige—and the raising of a limited amount of money might be possible to take it up right today. And no hard feelings either—I give you my word!
Just a matter, at most, Mr. Shrik, of bringin' more peaceful sleep to a worryin' 'ead—if you get me!
Lloyd Henan.
I gave the sheet to the nightwatchman. He disappeared inside again, with my communication.
And was gone a full five minutes. Evidently Shrik was writing out a reply. And I wondered what it would be. At last the nightwatchman reappeared, and locked the door very decisively after him. Handing a sheet of bank stationery to me, with a curious look. I held it up and read it. It ran:
If I had the note you evidently think I have, the price would be its full face value. And not one red penny less. But I haven't got it, for reasons which have been fully explained once and won't be gone into again. And don't, moreover, hang around the front door of the bank, trying to argue the matter with me when I come out, for I've instructed the nightwatchman, in case you've not vamoosed in five minutes, to call a policeman and have you taken up for disturbing the peace.
Gustav Shrik.
“Well,” I said, looking up at the nightwatch-man, “the answer seems to be, in general—no!”
And I left the bank, folding up Shrik's insolent answer and stowing it into my breast pocket. For I had no doubt that, if I didn't, that night-watchman, acting under instructions, would go inside shortly, and call a policeman—and, on this day of all days, I couldn't afford to waste any precious hours in a police court.
I was halfway down Logan Boulevard, unconsciously pursuing my way toward the very apartment building I had just left, puzzling deeply on the matter.
Just why had Shrik passed up the idea of a little loose change for that worthless note? Was it because he was a “stubborn Dutchman”? Or was it because he fancied the note might have a
value someday?”One would almost think,” I ruminated to myself, “that Okimo, kowtowing as lawyers do to bankers, had rung Shrik—just as I sent word up to him not to ring Bentley!—to tip Shrik off that his hundred thousand dollar note might shortly be worth a full hundred thousand. Only—he hasn't the least idea in the world that Shrik is the bank—I wonder,” I broke off suddenly, “if Okimo could have sent that girl scurrying down after me to see where I might be going—and if, behind my back, she heard my request on that open phone from Information—for Gustav Shrik, banker?—wasn't
so sleepy as she—”
I was at the door of the Shannley Bachelor Apartments by this time.
And I turned in. And rang the bell again.
“ 'Oo's ringin'?” came the same English voice.
“Same chap who was just here,” I told him briefly. “I saw Mr. Shrik. Only I quite forgot to ask him whether Mr. Okimo's phone message got through to him a while ago. Do you know whether—”
“Hokemo? Yuss. I put Mr. Shrik on the wire when Mr. Hokemo called. Mr. Hokemo caught 'im, just as Mr. Shrik was startin' over to the bank. An' give 'im some message.”
“Very well All okay then. That's all I wanted to know.”
I went outside. And shook my head. It looked as though Mr. Sato Okimo had taken my $10—and then tipped over my house of cards. Leaving me with even more problems on my hands than the one I had brought in to him.
Problems! $100,000 rewards—$100,000 notes. All unsolved. But there are always more ways than one to skin a feline. And, after all, to solve the problem of that reward alone there yet remained the specific problem of how to land Birkdale Asylum's noted ex-guest at their doors.
I was a block beyond the Shannley Bachelor Apartments. Far up the street I saw a Yellow Taxicab coming along. I guessed it would be empty at this hour. And I stood on the curb and waited for it. And, while I waited, drew out Shrik's letter again, and this time, with a half smile, re-read not the letter, but the insolent postscript he had appended. And which ran:
What the hell is the matter with you, you would-be foxy bastard, signing the name “Lloyd Henan” to your letter? Afraid it might serve to have you legally taken up on a charge of blackmail? If so, you don't know criminal law. But next time you “invent” a name, don't take it from a card you pick up off the sidewalk too close to the Shannley Bachelor Apartments. For it happens that I was the one who tossed Henan's card away this morning on the way to the bank, and that I know him quite well, and that I found it in my mailbox on the way out, showing that he called on me yesterday when no one was home. Use “John Smith” next time!
The Yellow Cab was drawing near me. And was empty. I signalled it with my outstretched arm. For problems though I had, there was—first of all—a certain matter of a skull—and one, MacLeish MacPherson, M.D. Who, 100-per cent suspicious, had demanded that I put all my cards—plus my real identity—on the table. And which procedure, considering all the shenaniging that had been done by me this early morn, it was assuredly time to do.
“Clark and Chicago Avenue,” I told the driver as I climbed in.
It was 6:10 A.M. by the clock atop Bush Bourse when I got back to MacLeish MacPherson's office, and he was waiting for me, grimly, standing in the door with his hands clasped back of him, his black forelock looking more than ever like an ominous inverted question mark.
He eyed me in an unfriendly way as I strode in, and took up the visitor's chair I had last departed from. I noted that a telegram had arrived during my absence, yet lay on his desk quite unopened. And it puzzled me, for he was certainly no un-curious man! He had closed the door by now, and returned to his ancient swivel chair.
“All right, now,” he said, grimly. “Out with it. Though I confess I didn't expect ever to see you here again.”
“Why, Doctor? Because you caught me in a little lie?”
“Yes. In a whole damn pack of 'em.”
“Well, I wouldn't let that interfere. And besides—I left Yorick, over there, as hostage! No, I've just concluded some interesting business—found that a decent guy can do a skunk a favor, but that the skunk, years later, remains—the skunk! And that—however, that has nothing whatever to do with what I came to see you about.”
“Which is—what? The truth now. What is the real reason you're up here—trying to get me to do a Cowper operation—on a skull?”
“Well, Doc,” I told him, “as I said when I left—you win. On the matter of getting at the real truth. The only winner, yourself, in fact, over a number of parties I've been in contact with—since midnight and after! Well, the reason for the skull—and the operation thereon—is—but I note you've an unopened telegram there on your desk, arrived since I was here last, and as I always feel that a man can't comfortably listen to anything before his mail is opened, I'll wait till—”
“Don't need to open it,” he grunted, exceedingly gruffly. “It's merely from an out-of-town patient of mine, who was due to be in today to have a little job done in his nose—but saying he can't be here.”
He took up from his desk the unopened telegram, and also the flimsy sheet of paper that was pinioned down under the huge iron nut—and deposited both carefully in the top drawer of his desk. It was evident that the flimsy sheet was the letter of request for the appointment, and the telegram was the cancellation—but of course I was puzzled.
“Do you mind telling me how—”
“How I can read a wire without opening it?” he said curtly. “Not at all The messenger boy who brought it said it was a cancellation—and also told me whose name was signed to it.”
“But still I don't exactly see why—”
“Still puzzled, eh?” he said sardonically. “Well I intend to turn the wire back to the office up the street this morning, unopened, as undeliverable—”
“Oh-oh!—I get it! And mail the patient a bill for the time allotted to him?”
“Which,” he came back, quite frankly, “is my business—and not yours. Consider yourself lucky that I'm not giving you a bill—in advance—before talking to you.”
“I am that,” I said fervently. “However—to my business—before you do start to bill me! Well, the reason for the skull—and the operation—is an insurance swindle—”
“Oh-oh! Now you're talking.”
“Right. I'm laying the cards on the table.”
“It looks as though you are. Well—what's your right name?”
“Charlie Brister.”
“Are you wanted by the police?”
“Yes. Escapee. San Quentin pen.”
“So that's why you seem to have a fluent vocabulary? Plenty of time to read, eh?”
“Yes. Books on everything, including some of a cell mate who thought he might learn to test eyes—from a cell. Poor devil!”
“So that's where the damned optometrical competition of late is building up from? Convicts!”
“Not from this poor bird. He kicked off in the infirmary. Leaving me his books to read.”
“Well—that helps! And now yourself again. Where are you from originally?”
“This town—right here!”
“Chicago, eh? And who are your people?”
“In short, what's my father's name—and who is his banker's”
“Well—yes, if he had any banking friends.”
“Oh he did all right,” I said with a half laugh. “However, we'll just leave him out of it. He's dead. Over half a decade. And my mother for 2 decades. And as for my father's banking friends—or should I say alleged friends?—their names won't help you to make this Cowper operation.”
“No, that's true. Well what, Brister, made you think I'd play in with you—on a swindle?”
“Well remember please, Doc, I didn't start off by assuming that. I tried, you know, to hook you on the poor student gag.”
“And that was damned poor judgment. Though I damned near fell at that—if you hadn't tripped on that name of that I. U. dean. All right then. When I pierced that story—what made you still think you could inveigle me into this operation?”
“Well, I had reason to believe I could.”
“What is it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Certainly.”
“You want me to 'yes' you—like a good little boy—or give you the straight—and the lowdown?”
“You give me the truth—and 100 per cent of the truth.”
“All right, Doc. You asked for it! A certain old bum I ran across in a gin-joint between the town I came from and here—and the time I left there and now—told me. Don't ask me, though, who he was—for gents in gin-joints don't exchange names! He had tattooing over his forearms, and rheumatism. If that would help you to identify him. Anyway, after I spilled that I was heading toward Chi to contact a crooked doctor, he said—” I broke off helplessly. “He said—”
“Yeah? What?”
“That I couldn't find a crookeder one than you—providing, of course, that you were still alive—nor a stingier.”
“Stingy, eh? What else did he say?”
MacLeish MacPherson appeared genuinely interested and not at all peeved. So I went on.
“You asked for it—so I'm giving it to you! He said you had plenty money stashed away in the savings bank. That you'd had the best training in Europe that a man ever did have. But he said that you'd do anything for money—from abortion—” I gazed as I spoke at the partly lowered tips of MacPherson's jet black window shades and the way they were designed to run up and down in those ingenious slots at their sides—“to helping a swindle,” I finished. “He said,” I went on, “that if you ever had the guts to rent yourself a decent office in the downtown Loop—hire a real reception-room girl—and put on a front—you'd be way up in G.”
“And what else?”
“Oh—that was all. Except that you were four Scotchmen rolled into one. And could skin an Armenian out of his pants!”
He grinned broadly. And spoke.
“Where did he say he learned all this?”
“He wouldn't say.”
“Wouldn't, eh? Well now—old, you say? And rheumatic? And tattooed? Ex-sailor, of course. Well did he by any chance have a huge mole on his chin?”
“He did,” I replied.
“Well, I know who he was. So that old blatherskite is alive yet, eh?”
“Alive and drunk. And do you mind telling me who he might be?”
“Not at all. He's an ex-seaman who worked as man-of-all-work for a sister of mine, who lived in Texas, a sister who went down on the freighter Pacifica in the Pacific Ocean 3½ years ago on her way to Australia. That naturally cut him adrift. She brought him up here with her once—six weeks or so before she died—so that's how he knows me. Rather, thinks he does. And so he wound up in a Northern gin-joint? Good enough for him. Well, let's get down to your case. What, Brister, is the full low-down on this insurance swindle you're trying to ring me in on? What's the amount?”
“Well, 10 grand—since at last I've come around to giving you the truth.”
“10 grand? Meaning thousands? 10 thousand?”
“Yes.”
“And how many persons are in it?”
“One person—unless you count myself—which makes it two.”
“And what percentage are you getting out of it?”
“Not a red cent. I'm merely paying back a huge favor by helping.”
“And do you expect me to help for the same price?”
“No.”
“All right. You'd better not! Well, go on with the story.”
“Sorry, Doc. But I've spilled too much as it is. The story—sure, it's yours if I know you're going to play. If not, I'm dry.”
“Well, what am I supposed to get—for doing this Cowper operation—on a skull?”
“A century note.”
“Meaning a hundred dollars, eh? Well, why the hell, on a ten-thousand dollar case, do I cut in for a hundred? Who gets the $9,900—since you—you are working for gratitude?”
“The party who gets the $9,900 handles money in a certain business and is short in their accounts—and requires the entire sum to keep from going to prison.”
“But why the discrepancy? Only a hundred dollars—for me?”
“I'll tell you why, Doc. Because you take no gamble. Your risk is nix. No one can ever prove you did such an operation. The hundred cash laid out for you is pure velvet. You take no chances. Whereas the party who will have to work the actual swindle to completion does take chances.”
He was thoughtful For so long a time that I argued the case further.
“Well, what about it, Doc? As I understand it, it will take you less than 4 minutes on a dead skull. Nothing, thereafter, to prove anything on you. Even if I went screwy and cracked—you could still say I said I was a poor student—and wanted to prepare a thesis. Which would white-wash you 100 per cent. And last but not least—there is that hundred bucks.”
“Let's see that hundred?”
“It's not on my person—but can be gotten inside of ten minutes.”
“From where?”
“Downtown in the Loop—somewhere. You don't need to deliver the skull to me till I get the money.”
“Don't worry,” he retorted grimly. “I wouldn't!” With which words he reached down into his hip pocket and drew forth a huge steel-blue six-shooter, so big that I wondered how it ever sat in that pocket. He polished off its barrel lovingly with his coat cuff, and then, since its production obviously had been only that I might see it, he replaced it.
“You wouldn't need that piece of artillery,” I said scornfully, “to get a square deal. Granting, for instance, that I can run faster than you—and presuming that you didn't have that cannon—and granting that I loped off with the skull—well, you could call the polizeidenei, couldn't you, and Scotch all future insurance collections over the U. S. A. based on Cowperized skulls—as this collection will have to be?”
“Well, it does look at least as though I hold you coming and going. Hm.”
He was silent, thinking.
“I can get the hundred,” I put in, “the minute I go downtown and apprise a certain party that the job has actually been done before my eyes—and is waiting.”
His eyes actually gleamed, and his hands started to rub each other like a miser's—when he caught himself with a start.
“Suppose,” he countered, “I say I do a demonstration operation—for a young man claiming to be a student. For a hundred bucks. I have no love for insurance companies. I had, as I tell you, a sister once. Insured for just five hundred dollars. In my favor. And she died in this freighter which sank. And the insurance company found a clause in her policy that, where no corpus delicti was furnished, the policy would be payable only by one half. And so they chopped me down to two hundred and fifty dollars. Again, I had an insane wife in the Elgin Insane Asylum—at least from around ten years ago up to three years ago when she died. And she failed, because she was insane, to tell me of a thousand dollar policy she held in my favor—paid up 7 years in advance, and by the time I did hear of the policy, it had lapsed by just it's 30 days' grace plus 4½ hours! And the company wouldn't reinstate it, because, you see, being insane, she couldn't repass the medical examination. And so because of that, I failed to collect a thousand dollars on Maria's death when she finally did die. So for all these reasons I have no love for insurance companies. I'd like to see them all skinned—from now to doomsday. For certainly in the case of my sister, she was dead, of course. And I should have received the full five hundred dollars on her life.” He paused, dourly. “So—suppose I said I'd play in with you! And do the operation? But only providing you gave me the complete lowdown on this entire case?”
“That would have to be okay, then,” I assented quietly.
“All right, then. We're agreed. But the full facts—all of them—and no monkey-doodling,” he warned.
“There'll be no monkey-doodling,” I said firmly to MacPherson. “For I can't waste time—not this day, by Gad!—searching out more nose doctors. Gad, no!” I paused. “Well, I've told you my name. Charlie Brister. Business: barker, at one time, in a medical show. Touring the West. Spieler in carnivals, also. In fact, I did the daytime spieling in front of Miss America—at the World's Fair, here—in 1933. Remember that show?”
“I wouldn't pay them their fifty cents,” he grunted, “to see their damned exhibition. The price should have been ten cents—no morel”
I made a silent gesture of helplessness. This man surely was the spirit of Armenia personified. So I went on with the story.
“Well anyway, I landed in San Quentin pen. For walking out with another guy—a cashier—on a show in California. With one night's receipts. Those receipts belonged to us. We'd been docked, for weeks, and skinned by the management—by sums equalling that take. Anyway, they got me. He got away. So it was San Quentin. Grand larceny. Five years. I got out in two. Do you recall that break, Doc, of about six months back, where 8 inmates got out in a garbage truck—each one in a can—with garbage atop his head? And one inmate, the spit of the original driver, driving it?”
His eyes lighted now with recognition. “Yes, I do! And you—you were one of those 8?”
“Right. The one in the decayed fish can, damn it! If you've got your daily papers stacked up anywhere here in the office for that far back, I'll—sure, why not, I thought maybe you saved them to sell them for poundage—anyway you'll find that one of the 8 crush-outs is named there as Charlie Brister. Now am I laying facts on the line—or not? I think I—however, back to the story. I landed here—no, not here in Chi—but in Centerville, Michigan—about 2 months ago.”
“Why did you go to Centerville, Michigan?”
“I'll tell you why! Because, during the latter part of the time I was in that pen, I'd been made orderly in the hospital. An old lifer, called Job Husley, was put in my charge one night. Nothing serious—he's still alive—and destined to live to be a hundred. But that night he was delirious. And he babbled to me. Thought I was some brother of his. A brother called Ira. From Centerville, Michigan. Asked me whether I had ever put through the $10,000 policy he'd had paid up on his life. Urged me to do it. To declare him dead. Said he'd successfully concealed his true identity.”
“So you had the tail of a family scandal, eh? Centered in Centerville?”
“Yes,”
“And the minute you got out, you went there?”
“Not the minute I got out. I had to make it by slow, safe degrees. But I got there finally.”
“And who was this Ira?”
“He was the Reverend Ira Lish. But dead. Dead a year, now, in fact. I made inquiries about him. He'd lived on the outskirts of the town. Had had an only brother Nat. A sort of vagabond and gambler. That of course was my 'Job Husley.' Well, the Reverend Ira, it seems, sometime before he'd died, had fallen in love with a woman that lived across the road from him—a woman who evidently came from nowhere—a woman known as Miss Vera Paisley—and, dying, had left her in a will, all he had. Which was his house, his books, his few claims and notes.”
“And who was Vera Paisley?”
“Nobody seems to know. She'd drifted in there from nowhere. A scandal-monger told me she had been the bank president's mistress. He'd met her in some big city. Induced her to come out there to the small town. Gave her a job as his secretary.”
“Young and beautiful, eh?”
“No, strange to say. Getting on towards the sere and yellow leaf.”
“Hmph. Well, go on.”
“Well, the bank president had died after bringing her there. But she'd been so damned efficient that the stockholder-directors gave her carte blanche to carry on the affairs of the tiny, one-horse bank. And so she was chief bottle-washer and everything else in the bank today. And lived in Ira Lish's good 2-story cottage.”
“I see. Only I don't see anything. Where does the skull come in?”
“I'm coming to that, by slow but sure degrees. Well, it seems that Ira Lish's only brother, Nat, had died back in 1913, and had been buried from the Lish house, and now lay in a little graveyard called Oakton Grove. Far out, and with a headstone over his grave. Whereas the old lifer, Job Husley, who had babbled to me, had addressed me as his brother Ira.
“So I went to Vera Paisley. I came to her place 'round midnight. And I told her that I had run across Ira Lish's brother Nat in a flop house in Sydney, Australia. Just to get her reaction first, you know.
“But before I ever even got it, there was a pounding on the door.”
“ 'Who's there?' the Paisley woman asked.
“ 'It's Sheriff Gaines, Miss Paisley,' I heard a man's voice say. 'I've identified a certain hobo, who's been inquiring about town a couple of days here, and who was cautioned today to get out by Gramps Forsley, as Charlie Brister, an escaped convict from the West. At least I'm ninety-nine per cent certain, by putting all the descriptions I've heard of him together. He was seen passing Moody's place up your road a while ago, but hasn't passed the watchman sitting with the red lantern at the torn-up place a half-mile down the road. And I believe he's hid up for the night here, unknown to you, of course, Miss Paisley.' “
“And she hid you? Or you would have been caught.”
“Right! She had reasons, perhaps. She told the sheriff to wait till she got something on—luckily, she'd already done all that when I'd summoned her—and came back to the room where we'd been talking in the light from a turned-down lamp, and which luckily was on the opposite side of the house from where the sheriff stood. This room had been Ira Lish's library, as I afterward learned. And he'd built that house himself. Well, she just took hold of the side of a set of book-shelves, and the entire wall of books swung forward, revealing a little den inside with a couch and everything. I took a chance—had to, in fact!—that she was on the square, and popped in, and she closed the swinging wall on me. And let the sheriff and his man in. And believe me, from all I heard through the wooden backing behind those books, he and the guy with him searched that house from A to Izzard—quite oblivious of the fact that the measurements of the place didn't quite make sense. And then he left, declaring that Brister doubtlessly had cut around the road watchman with the red lamp—and was already on the 12:30 freight train bound east.
“After he was gone a full fifteen minutes, she swung open the wall of books a little and came in, leaving the wall ajar so that the half light from the room gave us a chance to talk.
“ 'Convict,' she said, 'you've come just in time! I know where you met Ira's brother—and it wasn't in Sydney, Australia. It was in San Quentin penitentiary. But you can help me do what I can't do alone.'
“And I said, 'Lady, after the way you saved me from going back to ten weeks of solitary—and serving full three more years—anything in the world you want me to do—I'll do gratis!'
“And then, Doc, she told me the full story. Years ago, Ira's brother Nat, after having made a huge roulette winning in some big city, had bought a paid-up policy for $10,000 in favor of his brother Ira.”
“In what company?” asked MacPherson.
“The Western Domestic Life,” I said. “For I've seen the actual policy.”
“Yes, I know the company. An ancient one. But a strong one. So go on.”
“Well, Nat bought that policy believing he would be killed eventually. Shot by some gambler or something. But he went out West on a vagabonding trip. And killed a man on a railroad, and got sentenced to life under another name, Job Husley. He got word to Ira of all this by a smuggled-out letter.
“Ira, a year later, took in a sick young hobo whose face had been burned beyond recognition in a flop-house fire somewhere in the East. He died there a few days later. Ira, who had always wondered how he was going to account for Nat never turning up again, told the neighbors this chap was Nat. And buried him from the house as Nat. And planted him in the cemetery with a headstone giving his birth and death as Nat.”
“But he didn't try to cash the policy'“ asked MacPherson, puzzledly.
“No. Being a clergyman, that was the limit of his crookedness. Burying a stranger, I mean, as his brother. And he—however, to the story.
“The Paisley woman told me all. Everything. She had been the bank president's mistress when she came to Centerville. And had been left nothing but a job when he died. But she had been left, by Ira Lish, all his estate, such as it was. House, notes, claims, etc. And he had told her, when they had become engaged—for they had been so secretly—all about Nat. In prison in the West. And now, during the last few weeks, she had been casting about in her mind the idea of cashing in on that dead body that lay in Oakton Grove Cemetery.”
“How did she intend to account for cashing in so late?”
“By saying she found the paid-up policy back of a picture in the house, where it evidently had been stowed by Nat unknown even to his brother Ira.”
“And what put this idea into her head?”
“Well, she was $10,000 short in her accounts in managing the Truesdale Trust, the one trust of the little bank. She'd lost the money playing the wheat market in the city. And had to put it back soon, because the youngest Truesdale heir was becoming 21.”
“What were her intentions? That is, how did she intend to work all this?”
“She was pretty frantic—when I came there. That's why she protected me—when the sheriff tried to get me. She knew that the insurance company would investigate carefully. The claim being put in after nearly 25 years. The town undertaker—who was the furniture dealer—hadn't set down anything in the town mortality records about Nat's corpse that would conflict with the policy in any way. That is, he had set down: One upper front tooth missing. But on the photostat pasted to the policy, where it says: 'Any surgical operations?' the answer, in Nat's handwriting, was, 'Cowper operation on left antrum; wear gold antrum plug.'
“An old medical book lying around her house served to explain just what a Cowper operation was. And she knew then she'd positively have to get hold of the false Nat's skull—and make it correspond with that policy. It wasn't a case of buying a skull—getting it fixed up—and substituting it. For she'd read something, in the Scientific American, I think, where some sort of fluorescent X-ray tests will reveal today whether any bone in any skeleton belongs to that skeleton—or has been substituted for another. In short, that hobo's skull would have to be dug up—fixed with an antrum operation—and given a gold antrum tube—so that it would pass muster 100 per cent as Nat Lish. And that's why she welcomed the escaped convict here—with open arms. To help her do all this. Well, to make a long story short, I lived in that house with her for a considerable number of days. Sticking tight to that secret niche. And one night I went out to that graveyard. Which was out in hell-and-gone and surrounded by trees on all sides. And dug down into the fake Nat's grave. Fortunately, they'd buried him shallow because they'd planted him above a brother of Ira Lish's who had been buried in that same grave a year previous. I didn't have to go far. His coffin was gone. He was just a skeleton. I snaked out his head. And his jaw. Shoveled the dirt back. And brought the skull and jaw bone to her. We washed them carefully all over—just as the sconce itself up there is now. And, to finish the story,- and still helping her—I started for Chicago to try and locate a doctor who would put the surgically correct antrum opening in it and the antrum tube in it. And, outside of getting ill on the way—and having to lie up a brief while in a curious little hospital—no, I stashed the skull in a tree before I laid up—here I am!”
The story was done.
MacPherson was thoughtful.
“Well, this is a cut-and-dried insurance swindle all right, I see that now. But how can I be sure, Brister, that you yourself aren't going to profit by all this money?”
“For two reasons. Before midnight tonight, I stand—as I told you earlier 'this morning—perhaps to make a hell of a sight of money—more even than Miss Paisley will make. And legally, tool However, I see by your face that you don't seem very convinced on that—er—lottery ticket . proposition I told you about—and that you figure I'm dreaming of finding the man who's got the winning ticket. All right. But if I do find him—'twill be a hell of a big winning I'll make, I assure you! But there are complications there. And I can fail.”
I paused. “However, for a reason which will convince you perhaps that I'm not in on this ten grand insurance kill.” I paused again. “Vera Paisley, as I told you, is much older than I. She's well past 45. And she—but listen—haven't you guessed yet who Vera Paisley is?”
“No, I haven't. Why should—”
“Well, her right name is Monda MacPherson.”
“My God!” said MacPherson. “My sister!”
“Yes,” I told MacPherson, looking him straight in the eye, “your sister.”
“And—and she didn't go down on the Pacifica?”
“No,” I said. “After buying her passage, she met up with that bank president who later took her to Centerville, Michigan. And she sold the passage, at a big discount, to some girl in the San Francisco hotel where she was staying—some girl who wanted to get to Australia and start life all over again. And it was that girl, travelling under the same name as was on the ticket, who went down.” I paused, “All of which brings me now to the most important point of my discourse. 'Vera Paisley' MacPherson has no hundred bucks which she's throwing away on this phoney operation. She told me to try and wangle the operation out of you somehow, without divulging that she was still alive- if I could—for after some last bitter quarrel between you and her, she never wanted to see nor talk with you again. But that huge piece of artillery you're sporting on your hip there tells me I've no chance to back out of here with the finished skull—and my index fingers in my pocket pointing at you like the nose of an automatic—or to lope off with the skull up the street; I actually knew ten full minutes ago, I guess, that I might as well make up my mind that I'd have to give you the full lowdown. To tell you in short, Doc, that you were lucky to have collected even half of Monda MacPherson's tiny insurance policy. And to tell you, too, that in case you don't want to do this operation, she intends to let herself be convicted for embezzlement under her right name—in which case, of course, the insurance company will get a judgment against you for $250. Possibly even seize all those surgical instruments over there. You know the law. In short, Doc, you're already overpaid by about 150 bucks on this proposed operation.”
MacPherson sat dolefully like a man who had had a hand-made Oriental rug snatched out from under him.
“My Lord! Monda! To think—and now a small town bank manageress! But listen—maybe this woman you've contacted is an adventuress, and knew Monda—how does she prove she is Monda herself?”
“She knew you'd ask that,” I told him. “Well, this was a serious matter for her. So—so she showed me. In as delicate a manner as could be done!” I paused. “Does a triangular brown birthmark under her right breast—and a scar across her left hip mean anything?”
“You win,” said MacPherson. “The birthmark she had as a little girl. Even before her breasts must have developed. And the hip—yes—I remember that accident. Hm.”
He looked at me piercingly. “Listen, you—you are—you are merely grateful to Monda? Nothing else—involved?”
“That's all, Doc. There's nothing between us—in the way you imply. She's much older than I. And, also, she could have sent me back to hell. And didn't. Now she's in a bad spot. I want to help her in her game. Hand her the pay-back. And then get out.”
“It was she, then,” he said bitterly, “and not this alleged sailor you allegedly met, who characterized me so bitterly, eh?”
“Yes. She told me about the old ex-sailer who worked for her once in Texas. And whom she brought up here once. And I simply used him. It was she who wrote that charming ticket about you, Doc. Though I wasn't supposed to tell you all that.”
“Well, no use, I guess, for one to be angry at one's sister.” He paused gloomily. “After all, blood is thicker than water—so I'll help out on this game. For I don't want the insurance company suing me for a rebate, and—” He stopped, with a helpless gesture palms outward, of his two hands.
He gazed thoughtfully now toward the skull on his desk. Then turned to me.
“But now—about the gold antrum tube? And its enclosed plug? You—rather Monda—couldn't afford to have this skull disinterred with bright metal articles encased in it. It would take a few months' immersion, at least, in damp earth to properly blacken them. So how—when—”
“The Truesdale Trust,” I told him, “doesn't have to be accounted for till next summer. In short—then comes the deluge! Your sister figures to have me get this skull, and its lower jaw, back in the grave with the skeleton when I return to Centerville. With a bit of calves' brains inside—and well plastered outside with mud and all—and then to put in her claim in the spring.”
“I see,” MacPherson nodded. “Well, it's a good thing that her claim doesn't have to be entered at once. A full winter's immersion in that shallow ground will darken the gold—as much as if it had been under earth a quarter century.”
He bent over and with a key on a ring opened a lock drawer—one of the lowest ones—in his old desk. And straightened up a second later with a tiny gold tube in his hand. From its stopped end he withdrew its split pin plug, and then laid the plug itself back on his desk. “Fortunately,” he said, “I happen to have this one antrum tube and pin on hand. Otherwise I'd have had to call up the surgical supply company after business opens and have one rushed up here. However,. Brister, this tube doesn't happen to be one of the so-called cat-and-dog tubes put out by smaller surgical supply companies here and there. Not that they're not all identical—for they are—being all made standard for replacement and interchange of parts. But the plug head of this tube bears a serial number, and the letters which stand for its manufacturers, Sharp and Greene. Here—” He held the little device toward me, its round head forward. “Read that number.”
I squinted at the tiny round circle. “Yes, I see. 22,347. S & G. Which shows practically that it's been turned out within a year or so.” I looked up at him. “However, Doc, that etching can be cut off, can't it?”
“No, not cut off. That would look suspicious. It will have to be eaten off—with acid. Aqua regia. Which is expensive. In fact,” he groaned, “I furnish the operation—the antrum tube—and I'm supposed, it seems, even to put money out—in the bargain!”
“How much aqua regia will be used up?”
“About—about 40 cents worth. I can have that little made up downstairs in the drugstore.”
I dug down in my pocket. And withdraw 40 cents. And laid it down in front of him.
“There, Doc. Cheer up—the acid, at least, is on me!”
His face brightened. He pocketed the change hastily.
“It seems to me, though,” he grunted, “that I ought to get something—for doing this operation. If only that poor student fee you offered a while back.”
“Doc,” I said, “if I were Edsel Ford, the richest man in the world, or John D. Rockefeller the IIIrd, I'd just tell you to name your own price. Except that, however, in that case, I'd already have fixed up your sister with what she needed—without the necessity of this insurance swindle.”
“And except that,” he added, “you wouldn't be an escaped convict if you were either of those two men. And hence would never have met Monda. And, moreover, if you were either of those two individuals you just mentioned, you wouldn't be the richest man in the world. For neither of them, you see, happens to be.”
“Don't you think so?”
“I know so. According to the last financial census,”
“Who is, then?”
“McAllister Thane, the only, and incidentally no-good, son of Dougal Thane, recently deceased, who—”
“Oh yes. The guy in Buffalo whose estate now makes the bodies for all the cars in the world? And which estate owns, bag and baggage, International Copper Mines, Incorporated—and Limited! I used to take gym-cracks to a little girl kid who lived in the McAllister York Thane Orphanage, back of the stockyards here in Chicago, and supposedly created by the bird you speak of.”
“You mean,” asked MacPherson, his nostrils quivering—as it appeared a second later—at a possible morsel of unrevealed scandal, “the girl—was McAllister Thane's illegitimate daughter?”
“Hell no—Doc! I'm referring to the orphanage. When I said 'supposedly created' I was implying that it was probably actually created by the younger Thane's old man. And as to the girl, she was a kid both of whose parents had been my friends—over a brief space of time anyway.”
“Oh, I see. Yes. Well we call that orphanage, here in medical circles, 'Hiccup Home.' “
“You do? Why?” And I was curious, for the little child I'd once known in that institution had been well cared for.
“Why?” said MacPherson, with the scorn of one who apparently saw only folly in giving away good money to charity. “Because,” he went on, “McAllister Thane was deep in his cups, in some Cicero speakeasy or nightclub, when he signed over some $250,000 bequest from some aunt of his, to found the orphanage. All due to a mere visit he'd just made here to our notorious Back-of-the-Yards district. Plus too many ounces of alcohol. Anyway, everybody here in medical circles calls the institution just Hiccup Home.”
It irritated me, MacPherson's calm acceptance of his profession's glib and readymade phrases. The little girl to whom I had brought toys in the long ago, had been well cared for in that home. I myself, moreover, one day when the orphanage was receiving an official inspection visit by its founder, and its trustees, had been in it talking to that very same little girl. I was willing to agree with anybody about the founder—his appearance—or his erraticisms, as they subsequently came to light in the press—but I was badly prejudiced in favor of the gift itself; the home for kids. And I was just about to make spirited retort, when MacPherson himself took up the thread of the argument.
“And so,” he said definitely, “counting the Dougal Thane Estate of Buffalo as McAllister Thane's fortune, and taking its official figure of a thousand million seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars, the latter's wealth exceeds that of young Ford's today, and likewise that of young Rockefeller's.”
“Well,” was my retort, “I think your logic is all wrong, Doc. For it's a moot question, say I, whether—if a man's estate is being held in trust for him for a couple of years till he gets some sense, as I understand the younger Thane's is—he technically possesses that fortune.”
“I don't agree with you there,” MacPherson returned. “But let's shelve the point. You wanted someone, back there, to envy. So I named him.”
“Well,” was my own comment, “I can't say I'd be inclined to envy any erratic nut like McAllister Thane. I wouldn't mind his fortune, but I wouldn't want to own his queer brain! Which eventually, I believe, will kill him. When it comes to trying to cross the Pacific alone in a 14-foot sloop and getting wrecked and damned near drowned—and crossing Canada alone in a balloon and damn near dying in a forest north of Hudson Bay—and walking across Europe with a beggar—and getting pinched and put in Old Bailey—and catching some obscure fever there that near killed him in London—no thanks! If I had his billion dollars, I'd be spending it, all right—but not seeking new thrills out of life. I've had all I want—plus ordinary, everyday starvation besides. Starving, disease and so forth—seems to be thrills to him. While to me, starvation is just another wrinkle in the lining of my belly.”
“Well,” commented the doctor with a glance at his clock, “being both poor men—at least relatively—we'll let these scions of wealth go now. And omit theories of what we might do—or might not do—if we had their fortunes. And get down to business. Come over if you wish—to the corner where the sink is. That's where I always put up my vise.”
I followed him. For he had the skull under one arm—and I knew that we were ready to get under way at last with that operation.
From his instrument case on the wall, MacPherson took out a light vise, with affixed clamps, the latter of which he secured firmly to the edge of the sink. Its jaws, thus locked, lay left and right.
“A vise for sharpening instruments and sometimes modifying them,” he explained. “A doctor does a good deal more mechanical work than whittle on people, you know.”
He now took forth a folded piece of blanket, which had lain beneath the vise, and which was evidently for the purpose of wrapping about a valuable instrument. And without further explanation, he wrapped it laterally about the skull. And locked the latter carefully in the vise. With an admirable amount of knowledge, plainly, of the proper “squeeze.”
Locked thus, its upper teeth were toward us and pointing slightly upward.
“Considerably better position,” he commented, looking down at it, “than when a man is in the chair—under local anesthetic.”
While I waited, in a spot just out of the way from where he would work, he stepped over again to that dilapidated-looking and partly glassless instrument case of his, and came back with two tools, one just a pair of powerful forceps, and the other, a long slender bit, like the bit from a brace-and-bit, with the typical truncated pyramidal nubbin on the end, capable of being locked into the socket of a revolving drill. He deposited the two tools carefully in the dry sink, and came back presently from the case with a small steel circular handle whose stem held a socket, and which socket held a thumb-screw, and into which socket he proceeded to lock the bit.
“Now,” he explained at last, “for this operation to pass the insurance company—the entrance to the antrum should be made in the outer socket of the first molar. The only time the antrum is ever entered in any other way is if the man is minus teeth—and has to retain that first molar to chew on. In that case, the surgeon can go in by the second bicuspid—or even the 2nd molar socket. But first, we'll draw our friend's first molar.”
He took hold of the molar with his forceps, and with unusual deftness, slightly twisting, slightly pulling, drew the tooth.
“You can crack even a dead jaw,” he explained, “by pulling a tooth. Well, that's that!”
He leaned over and blew into the open hole. Bits of bone—alveolar fragments, as he explained, between two of his exhalations—flew out.
“And now,” he went on, “we get down to the real Cowper operation. Which, since you've looked it up, can be summed up in the simplest statement that it consists of the providing of a permanent channel through which a patient, with a pus-infected antrum, can wash that antrum out daily with antiseptic solution. For we use now the Cowper bone-threading burr which makes the standard channel of 3/16ths inch in diameter—just the size to hold that gold tube on my desk.” He pointed to the bit held in the round handle. “Believe it or not, Brister, I bought this bone-threading burr—which could have cost a full $30 to $50 in a surgical supply house—for 50 cents, at an auction of my old professor's effects in medical school. Just about the time I graduated. He made all his own instruments—had been a machinist in Scotland before he became a doctor. 50 cents—no more! A perfect Cowper alveolar threader.
“You see,” he went on, “the spiral thread on the drill portion—after the burr gets through—but you can look for yourself.” And he showed me where the burr stopped, and the sharp thread began. “When a man is under anesthetic, we aim to complete the operation as briefly as possible. In short, without changing instruments—and possibly poking more infection into the already infected antrum. We—”
“But how,” I asked, “can you pass through the burred-out hole—with the upper threaded section? That is, what I want to say is: the threaded section seems pretty high up on the stem—that is, for human anatomy!”
“Because of the depth of the antrum,” MacPherson replied. “After the burr goes through into it, the drill can go on further. In fact, burr and threaded section of drill can both lie in the antrum. That cavity, under the eye and next the nose, remember, will at best be filled only with soft pus. Now for instance—if this bit is held in an electric hand drill—like a machinist uses, you know?—the surgeon slows the speed way down, for the threading process, that's all; either that, or takes off the electric motor device, and puts on this simple handle—and turns it slowly so that it cuts the thread into the bone. Or—the surgeon can do it by hand all the way. As I am here. I have an electric motor holder for revolving tools of course; you can see it up there on the third glass shelf. I use it in certain operations on noses—sometimes on mastoids. But this fellow here doesn't require either speed or finesse—so we'll just go in slowly by hand.”
He inserted the burred point of his hand-drill affair now into the tooth socket, and, pressing hard against it, turned it slowly. I could hear the rasp of the bone as the burr ate firmly in, and small bits of bone dust kept running out.
“We're through,” he said. “That is—into the antrum. Now we must be careful not to rock the tool.”
He turned it slowly. And held it very rigidly. Its diameter, here, was obviously a little greater.
“I'm cutting the spiral thread,” he explained, “just as a plumber cuts one on an iron pipe, And I—but there—I happen to know when it's cut all the way.” He proceeded to withdraw his drill by unscrewing it slowly with reverse motion, and then, as the threads on instrument and bone respectively finally delocked themselves, he drew it gently all the way out. Detached the bit, and placed it back in his instrument rack. Not very antiseptic, that gesture, I reflected! And, I decided, I wouldn't like to be the next living patient—after the thing had already been shoved into a dead man's head. However—it was none of my business.
“Now the gold antral tube,” MacPherson said.
He repaired to his desk, and came back with the tube. And clenched at one end of his forceps.
“This tube,” he said, “is of extremely soft gold outside—but not inside—it's hardened a bit there—and its outer surface will actually cut itself onto those sharp spiral ridges of bone as it goes in. Enough so that it will stay fixed—though if the patient's antrum ever clears up, the surgeon can easily unscrew it out.” He inserted the end of the tube deeply into the tooth socket. And turned very gently. He knew his business, ostensibly, for he did not rush things so as to break the bone threads. The passage was short. the tube quickly lay in it, its open gold mouth ready for the split-pin stopper.
“Well, our friend is done,” he said. “All except for eating off that number on the head of that pin. We'll adjourn back to my desk now. Rather, you will. For I'll have to run down to the drugstore up the street, and have that aqua regia made up. It will take nine or ten dippings to clear that number off. And in the meantime, Brister, I'll lock you in—so as to lock any possible clients out. Yes.”
We were back at his desk now, where he resuscitated from one of his drawers a bottle, no doubt so that he would get more aqua regia for his 40 cents. And nodding toward his dilapidated visitor's chair, he left. The sound of his key clicking in the door was audible a few seconds later. I stood gazing down at his old desk, and his quaint method of classifying his papers, from the old rusty nut, now unutilized, to the little bottle marked “gall-stones” which held down a pink bill, face up. A queer, queer duck, all right. A man who actually stood in his own light.
At last I heard the sound of MacPherson's key clicking. And he came in, his bottle in his hand, half full with yellow fluid. From a lower side drawer in his desk he got a china saucer with a cracked edge. And now sat down creakingly in his swivel chair.
“Well, this will take ten times more time than the whole operation just completed. So don't get impatient. While I'm eating the number off, suppose you tell me more about yourself, Brister.” He was pouring some of his acid into the saucer. “I suppose since that old sailor was a concoction of yours—with Monda's help, that is!—that you weren't in a gin joint in Gary at all, eh? Much less even in Gary?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I really did stop off in Gary on my way down here. And I really was in a gin joint there as well. That part was true. And since we've time on our hands, I can relate something connected with drilling into a man's sconce instead of his jaw—though it may be all Greek to you. That is, I met a bird in that gin joint named Dan Jafferson—he was a brother of some Sam Jafferson, who it seems got the electric chair here early in the year, 3 years back, for some so-called Harlem Park Drill Murder. And—bitter as hell he was! Wouldn't talk of the killing—except to tell me—and some other guy who was hoisting one with us—that his brother got the chair unjustly. Was there such a murder—or was this guy cuckoo?”
“No, he wasn't cuckoo.”
MacPherson dipped the head of the split gold pin, as he spoke, into his acid, then took it out—shook off the excess acid—and let the fine film of corrosive fluid work on the gold, as one could see by the faint fumes rising.
“No,” he repeated, “the fellow wasn't cuckoo. At least so far as there being such a murder, For there was one such. It took place in September, 4 years back. And it was known as the Harlem Park Drill Murder. And it was one of the most sensational cases of the day. Though I think now, today, that there is no doubt that Sam Jafferson, the machinist, got the chair justly. I was confident at first that the victim's cousin, who inherited some 6,000 pounds sterling through his death, had performed one of the most remarkable alibi stunts on record—between Minneapolis and Chicago. In fact, I had worked out a whole possible solution of such an alibi, and—”
“Whoa, Doc! If it was September, 4 years back, when that murder broke—I was on the high seas with the Milver-Becken Carnival Outfit—sailing for South America—my first carny job. Only to land up eventually in a Rio Janiero hospital with a busted appendix. In fact, I must have been in the hospital when the Jafferson bird got the hot seat. For it's all Greek to me. Do you mind giving me the lowdown—or is it too far away now? For I can't get over this fellow Dan Jafferson's fierce bitterness.”
“Well, it's plenty far away now all right,” MacPherson replied. “But not far away in my mind. Because it dealt, you see, with the physiology—and in a sense also, the pathology—of nosebleed.”
“Nosebleed? But what's that got to do with—”
“To do with me? Well Sam Jafferson was convicted, to some extent, on the testimony of a physician here whose opinion isn't worth a whoop, in my estimation. For I've written a treatise on nosebleed that's part of the standard medical encyclopedia today. I, by rights, should have been called as expert witness.” The doctor was getting angry. “And I was certain I would be called as witness for the court—although, mind you, I never saw the particular inside of the particular nose involved—and so I don't know today whether my testimony would have counted for or against Jafferson the machinist. But I should have been called. Not the man who was called. For I would have known. Yes.” He paused, wrathfully. “Yes, I followed every detail of that case—studied it at every angle—expecting that the fact that my article on nosebleed is in the medical encyclopedia would result in my being summoned. And, damn them—they gave their state fee of $100 to another man. A man who doesn't know half what I know on that subject.”
The doctor grumpily surveyed the gold antrum plug, then dipped its head in the solution again, and repeated his operation of shaking off the drops and letting the film of acid work. “Number's a little less distinct now,” he remarked.
“Yes,” he went on wrathfully, “a hundred good dollars. And here I know more about nosebleed than—But you say this chap you met up with not only claimed his brother was innocent—but he himself was bitter as the devil?”
“Yes. Bitter as hell, Doc.”
“Well, all relatives of executed men are bitter. That doesn't signify anything.”
“No. But he said he saw his brother asleep all night the murder was committed.”
“Well, that of course was his testimony at the trial. However—“ MacPherson shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if what he says is really true—then, by God, the chap's cousin—T. Parker Yocum was his name—was guilty. Just as per my original hypothesis. And if so, the Yocum chap pulled one of the cleverest alibis on record.”
“Whoa, Doc—Yocums—alibis—Minneapolis—give me the lowdown.”
“Well, that's easy enough.” MacPherson screwed his eyes on the antral tube plug. “You see, the chap who was murdered was a chap named Trell Yocum. He was a young Australian—that is, an American who went to Australia at the age of 19 or 20; and he was about 25 when he was killed here. And he composed popular tunes by ear only—working 'em out on the piano by one finger—and putting 'em onto paper just as a melody only.”
“That is,” I queried, “he had to have somebody else write the associated notes?”
“Right. And the words, too.” The doctor was silent a moment. “Well, he'd made 6,000 pounds sterling—$30,000—on his share alone of Melbourne Blues—if by any chance you remember the tune. It not only swept Australia, but England too, and was sung on every radio over here. By multiple copyright or something, he'd landed his half of the royalty all over the world. Moreover—when he was murdered—the sales of his tune took a spurt.” The doctor paused. “Anyway, he came here to Chicago from Melbourne, Australia, where he'd taken up practically permanent residence, to visit his cousin—this chap, T. Parker Yocum—who then lived in a newly bought bachelor bungalow out in Harlem Park. A one square block development that was proposed to contain only homes for bachelors. At that time, T. Parker Yocum's one bungalow was the only one built on the whole square.
“And,” the doctor went on, “inasmuch as T. Parker Yocum afterward inherited this chap's 6,000 pounds in a bank over there in Melbourne, by the chap's will—we can presume or not—as we like—that this chap Trell Yocum told T. Parker that he had made such a will And that he—but to the facts. Trell Yocum, as I say, got into town here one day from Australia—he got his cousin's address from the telephone company's information department—for T. Parker hadn't been out there in Harlem Park long enough to have his phone in the directory—and went straight out to the house. T. Parker, however, was leaving for Minneapolis, Minnesota that night—he had been a former engraver, it seems, and is an expert amateur photographer today—I recall seeing some of his prints in a recent free photographic exhibition held at the Art Institute—anyway, he was to identify in Minneapolis, for the government, a man who had tried to make a deal with him to photograph a bottled-in-bond whiskey revenue stamp, and to make one zinc etching of it. And going with him, it seems, were two friends of his—and that's what helped to give him such a grand alibi: one was the Reverend Eustace Gershley, some Episcopalian minister who was on his way up to Alaska to take up a church—and a chap—what the hell was his name now?—yes—Ensign Wynn Midley, who was rejoining his vessel at Seattle. The Arizona, I think it was. Or the Texas. The case is, by God, fading from my mind.” He wrinkled up his forehead and thought. “Well, T. Parker Yocum introduced his cousin, Trell Yocum, to both men that night when they stopped by to pick him up to go to the train. They all had a glass of wine together—and Trell Yocum again assured his cousin that he could get along fine in the latter's absence. He said he could forage in the pantry for himself—cook himself whatever meals he needed—and, in fact, relished the chance to work out a new Blues song to be called 'American Blues.' So they left him there.
“The three got to Minneapolis next morning. That was—let's see—September 12th if I'm not mistaken—and 4 years back, of course. Ensign Midley called back to the Yocum house by long distance to inquire if he'd left his papers there. Yocum told him yes—and arranged to put them in an envelope and forward them to the battleship Arizona; and Midley then put Trell Yocum onto T. Parker, who asked Trell if he were getting along all right. He was, it seems; and after giving Trell their address—Hotel Minnetonka—they hung up. All three stayed at that hotel that day. Night came. And just as they were breaking up, around 10 P.M., Midley and Rev. Gershley to go on to Seattle, and T. Parker to come home—Trell Yocum called up. A wire had come for the Rev. Gershley, care of T. Parker Yocum. So Trell wanted to know what to do with it. So Gershley had him read it on the telephone. Then Gershley put T. Parker on the wire, and T. Parker, in front of them all, told Trell he was taking the 11 o'clock train back to Chicago that night, and would be home by 9 next day.
“Then,” I put in, “Trell Yocum was definitely alive as late as 10 P.M.?”
“Absolutely. The later arrival of Midley's papers at the battleship Arizona confirmed Trell Yocum's having mailed them before 10 that night. So he was positively alive up to 10 o'clock, September 12th.”
“But,” I said, “I grasp that he was dead—when T. Parker Yocum got back to his home next day? On September 13th?”
“Evidently. T. Parker drew up to his house in a taxicab, just as a crowd of police were swarming over the place. For a boy, cutting across the prairies there, had seen a pair of big Florentine doors, which fronted on a low cement portico without any railing, a foot's hop from the ground, open. He had tried to collect for some newspapers he'd delivered. Had found that that morning's paper had not been taken in. So he reported to the police. And they came promptly.”
The doctor had made another dip of his gold pin.
“And they found Trell Yocum,” he continued. “He was lying on a day couch, close to which was a standing lamp, in the corner of the big drawing-room that fronted on those Florentine doors. The grand piano stood in the opposite corner. He'd been dead since—so the doctors figured it—about 2 A.M. or 3 A.M. Some pages of partly formed music lay there. He'd been chloroformed. He'd evidently been working out a melody under the lamp—hopping back to the piano now and then—and somebody had come up—perhaps through those doors—and clapped a rag of chloroform against his face. And then, while he was unconscious, had drilled a hole into the back of his head.”
“Now I begin to see,” I commented, “why this Sam Jafferson—since he is a machinist—got dragged into it.”
“Oh Lord, man, it wasn't just that he was a machinist! That was just a minor factor in his going to the chair. There were plenty other things. And—” Here the doctor dipped his antral tube plug in the solution again. And scrutinized it. “Nearly eaten off now, the number,” he said. “And let's see—where was I?”
“Well, T. Parker—and the police—found Trell Yocum lying dead, his brain drilled into from the back.”
“Yes. One of the bulbs had been removed from the 2-bulb lamp. It was found across the room, but with no fingerprints on it, since the murderer had used his handkerchief or something with which to unscrew it. Since plenty other fingerprints were subsequently found, it was presumed that he'd used his handkerchief only because the bulb was hot—and not because he was a clever killer. Anyway, because that bulb had been removed, it became plain that the murderer had had an electric drill—had hooked it into the lamp socket—indeed, the police later located both the drill and the man!—and he had drilled deep enough, by many inches, into Trell Yocum's brain to kill him.
“Well,” MacPherson went on, “T. Parker was able to show right off the bat that he had been in Minneapolis, the preceding day and the greater part of the preceding night. At least, he'd definitely parted from Rev. Gershley and Ensign Midley a few minutes after 10. For they got to these two men on the train at Bismarck, North Dakota, and confirmed that absolutely. So it was shown that Trell Yocum was alive and well at 10 o'clock—and T. Parker in Minneapolis with a night's train ride ahead of him.
“And it was right there, my friend—thanks to the fact that you can ride from Minneapolis to Chicago in a few hours—and thanks to the fact that it isn't possible to determine the hour of death exactly, so that Trell Yocum could have died as late as 4 A.M.- that I worked out a neat hypothesis as to a certain stunt that T. Parker Yocum—well, might have pulled: Namely, that he might have taken a plane back to Chicago, disguised a bit of course—and gone to the house and killed his cousin—then returned around morning in a taxicab when the police were swarming in and—but of course I only cleaved to this hypothesis until the evidence commenced to roll in hopelessly on this Jafferson.
“So—getting back to T. Parker Yocum driving up to the house in a taxi. The murder was done, over, completed. He made official identification of the body of his cousin. And it was buried in Rosehill Cemetery—no, I believe it was shipped to Indianapolis, Indiana, where the Yocum family originally emanated from.”
“And,” I said, “T. Parker ultimately inherited the 6,000 pounds in the bank in Melbourne?”
“Yes. Trell Yocum had named him in his will. And before he'd—but that's getting a bit ahead of my story.
“The police scoured the neighborhood, of course. And among those they arrested was Sam Jafferson, a machinist who had installed a wall safe for T. Parker 5 days before, the latter wanting a place for valuables. This machinist lived, with his brother—this bird you evidently met up with in Gary—3 blocks distant, across the prairie and in a row of workingmen's homes.
“This wall safe was in the basement of Yocum's bungalow. And it had plenty fingerprints on it. Fresh ones! As though a man had plotted the night before to work on it. But had been scared away—or something. The fingerprints corresponded absolutely with Sam Jafferson's. And, incidentally, his and his brother's home was under foreclosure. And he had seen T. Parker put five hundred dollars in bills in that safe. T. Parker claimed that, and, moreover, the bills were there, when he opened the safe in front of the police.”
“Well—what was Sam Jafferson's story?”
“Wait, first, till I state all they got on him. They found his electric drill, as I say. And the bit—that had gone into Yocum's head. And it was all bloody—”
“Ow! That was bad. Was it possible to connect the blood with Trell Yocum's blood?”
“Yes. Absolutely. It tested up conclusively as Yocum's blood.”
“Whooie! I'd say right off the bat, then, that this guy Dan Jafferson I met up with had a crust to pretend to be bitter about—”
“Well, wait. Give the outfit a break. Dan Jafferson, for one thing, swore that his brother Sam had been home asleep all night, the night of the murder. Yet T. Parker Yocum testified that he had wiped the wall safe all off, after its installation, a few days before. And yet, as I say, Sam Jafferson's fingerprints were found on it! Well, Sam Jafferson claimed at his trial that the day of the night on which Trell Yocum was killed, he, Jafferson, had gone to the T. Parker Yocum bungalow to make a final drill hole in the wall that he hadn't made when he'd installed that safe. He hadn't had, he said, all the screws with him at the time of the first installation—and hadn't truly completed the job properly—had just plugged in one screw hole temporarily with a bit of black putty, or something. Now, however, he wanted to complete the installation properly for T. Parker Yocum. But, he claimed, he found a stranger there. That stranger being, as we know, Trell Yocum. Who allowed him to complete his work. And then Jafferson—so he claimed!—worked on the safe. Installed the final screw hole. And the missing screw. And tested the safe for rigidity, etc. And there, he said, was where his fingerprints got on the safe door—and around its frame. But he also claimed that, after he'd done the mechanical work, Trell Yocum had manifested an interest in his electric drill—had leaned over it to inspect it more closely—and had had a nosebleed spurt. Had spurted all over the drill, in fact. And had, of course, apologized.”
“Is that possible, Doc? I mean—to have a sudden, unexpected spurt of blood from the nose?”
“Quite. And that's the point wherein and whereon I should have been called! But they called another man, confound 'em. A man downtown in the Loop. A man who doesn't know anything particularly about that field. And he examined Trell Yocum's body—that is, the lining of his nose. And, later, swore at the trial that he had observed no sign of recent hemorrhage in Trell Yocum's nose. Moreover, an Australian doctor, to whom Yocum had gone regularly in Melbourne for all of his life, furnished some kind of a statement or something that Trell Yocum had never complained to him of nosebleed. So of course the jury didn't believe the nosebleed story at all. And to boil my long story short, Sam Jafferson was convicted. Got the chair. And thanks to the shortening of red tape on appeals matters—or else not having money to appeal the case, or something—was electrocuted.”
“Could you have told whether Trell Yocum had spurted blood over that drill from his nose—had you been called?”
“If called to view the body when it was still available—yes. And absolutely. For I have a complete test for such history. To be used in industrial malingering. Where workers claim they can't do this—or can't do that—because of chronic nosebleed. I'll never know now, of course, what the inside of Trell Yocum's nose would have shown. And since T. Parker Yocum himself had a workshop of sorts in the cellar of his bungalow, with tools of a sort, I suppose I'll never be really 100 per cent satisfied in my subconscious mind that he didn't come back by air—kill his cousin, and bury the drill and bit that he did it with, before showing up next morning in a taxi.”
The story I had wanted to hear was finished. And, reflecting on MacPherson's article in the encyclopedia, and his not being called as a specialized witness, I also thought to myself, then, and there, that it would be tough ever to be up for murder—with the one professional witness who could testify and maybe prove my innocence—the one not called by the court at all. However, I wasn't Sam Jafferson!
The doctor gazed at the head of the antral plug which he had dipped once or twice during his completion of the facts of the Harlem Park Drill Murder. Then he wiped it off on an old rag in his top drawer.
“The number's more than eaten off now,” he said, “by several molecules deeper!”
He led the way to the skull still lying in the vise. Squeezed together the split pin of the plug, and shoved it way in.
“And there we are,” he said. “All done! A perfect surgical job. Though it will take 6 months in the damp, wet ground to give it the true artistic touch, however.”
He unscrewed the skull from the vise, and handed it to me. I had brought over to the sink with me the original paper, and the string, which had lain in the waste basket. And, standing, wrapped the skull and tied it about as it was when I brought it.
“Well, Doc, for your sister's sake—thanks a lot,” I said. “And now she'll want to know if you care to see her? And, if so, when you'll be coming up to Centerville for just that purpose? And what shall I tell her?”
“Tell her certainly I want to see her. I want to talk over some of the points of her collecting on this insurance policy. And as for when I'll see her, tell her next Sunday—for the weekend excursions to all Michigan points take place Saturdays. I'll be there.”
“Okay. I'll tell her all that. For I go straight back now to Centerville—that is, after midnight tonight has come, and a certain project of mine has told its tale one way or the other!—with no gin joints, hospitals, etc., on the way this time. Good-bye. And again—thanks.”
“Don't mention it. She's my sister, isn't she? So what else could I do? I'll see you too, when I come Sunday next.”
I put my package under my arm, and left MacPherson standing there, doleful, dour, a peculiar lone crow.
And went down the gloomy stairway. The night-working Brother Dove across from MacPherson was at work on some pre-business hour patient—at least he must have been the night-working half of the Brothers Dove, for it had been only 20 minutes of 8 by MacPherson's clock when I left.
I went down Clark Street a block. Two blocks. Three. Till I came to a drugstore which was open. And went in.
And bought three telephone slugs. The door of the phone booth was triply glassed, and the booth was, moreover, at the front of the store near the doorway—as far away from the prescription section at the rear where the clerk seemed to be working at something, as could be. For which I was glad.
And entering the booth, I prepared to call a number. Rather, two numbers altogether. The first being no less than that of the man I'd just left.
I pondered deeply a moment, however, before I took up the instrument, speculating whether to use a disguised voice—an easy enough thing for me to do—now that I was ready to throw off the spurious personality of “Charlie Brister”; and then I concluded that a disguised voice might not work out at all in this matter, since MacPherson had heard my real voice only a quarter hour before. If, I told myself, it had been a month since we had talked, then the setup for a disguised voice would have been quite different. However, I realized, some disguise of my voice I must have. If for no other reason than to avoid baffling and confusing MacPherson right off the bat. And, besides, I wanted to see how soon he would get down to business with me, once I should let him know that—
So, standing squarely in front of the phone on its low ledge, encased in that tight cubicle, I stretched my handkerchief, which fortunately was thin, across the transmitter, and clamped it thus by a loose rubber band that was floating around in one of my coat pockets.
And dropping in my slug, was shortly dialing the number Superior 7781 which I'd seen on the transmitter collar of MacPherson's phone.
He answered very quickly.
“Hello? Superior 7781.”
“Is this Doctor MacPherson?” I asked in a low-placed voice, which, with the handkerchief filter, I knew he'd never recognize as “Charlie Brister.”
“Yes,” he said. “And to whom am I speaking?”
“Doctor, my name is Harry Steenhammer.”
“Harry—Steenhammer,” he said slowly. “I—see. And—but what can I do for you?”
“Doctor, Louis is dead.”
“Louis—who?” His words were very slow, startled.
“Brother Louis, of course. I said I was Harry.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But then—I don't know any Louis Stee—brother, you say?—well—ahem—where did he die?”
“In Alaska. Under the name of Louis Android.”
“Hm. Well. Hm. But what has all this to do with me, Mr. Harry, may I ask?”
“Well, it all depends, Doctor. I want to borrow—five hundred dollars.”
“Five—hundred—dollars? You sure are—but on what basis, may I ask, did you want to borrow it?”
“On what Lou told me—before he died. Do I get the five hundred?”
I am confident that at that moment MacPherson passed a hand helplessly over his brow. If only by the tone of his voice.
“But—but I told you I don't know any Louis- Steenhammer, did you say the name was?”
“Yes, that's right. But anyway, Doctor MacPherson—Louis told me everything just before he died. He was delirious. And raved plenty.”
“To whom? Understand—I'm—I'm trying to get daylight in this.”
“You will. Well, he raved just to me. Not any nurse, Doctor, for I was his nurse! I—his brother—got all he had to spill.”
“Hm. Well—now—this is pretty much of a muddle to me, my friend. Harry you say your name is? Well—what did Lou—that is, your brother—die of?”
“Sarcoma.”
“Of how long duration, if I may ask?”
“10 months.”
MacPherson's voice grew suddenly hard—as hard as when he had denounced “George Spelvin, bullfighter.”
“Then your man,” he said scornfully, “was under heavy opiates—and without any delirium. And so said quite nothing before he died; added to which, you evidently have the wrong MacPherson.” But he didn't hang up!
“Then—then, Doctor,” I put in plaintively, “you positively never knew any man—named Louis Steenhammer?”
“I've never even heard of such a man—in my life.”
“Well—that settles it then. I've the wrong MacPherson all right. Pardon it, please.”
And I hung up.
And stood, shaking my head.
God—what a fox he was!
Nothing to do now but to get down to business—with the real facts—real incidents—real names—and cut out the romancing.
So I raised the receiver again.
Detaching my handkerchief.
And dialed the instrument once more. For the same number.
He was back on again immediately.
“Hello?” he greeted. Then: “Well—who's speaking?”
“It's the chap,” I replied, “who was just in there—you know?—on that Cowper job?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Brister. Yes. I recognize your voice, of course. What can I do for you now?”
“I wanted to talk to you a few minutes, Doc. Something I didn't cover while I was there. I tried to get you just a minute or so back—but your line was busy.”
“Yes. A woman had me on a full 18 minutes trying to jew me down to a mere $75 for a tonsillectomy for her daughter. I finally told her it was that or nothing—and hung up on her.”
Liar! He would have talked all day, I knew, to consummate a deal for a tonsillectomy at $25.
“Well, Doc,” I began, “I don't know just how to start—or how to hand you this info—but I want to give you now the real low-down on things. My real identity, that is. All that story I gave you up there a while back was hooey.”
“Hooey?” He seemed, however, quite unconvinced. “Oh, be yourself, Brister! You gave me the full details about Monda. So I knew damn well that—oh, I get you. You mean the story about yourself—and your past?”
“No, Doc. I mean the whole damned story. Including the part about your sister Monda. Who beyond any doubt is dead and drowned in the Pacific. But first—before I begin speaking- my real identity. Get it now, Doc: Phil Kirby—once of Chicago—yes—but for some years 2nd Assistant Investigator in the Indianapolis, Indiana, Division of Local Criminal Identification.”
He was alarmedly silent. And the Indianapolis, Indiana, part of which I had just conveyed to him must have struck him as highly sinister.
At last MacPherson spoke.
“Well, what do you want of me? Last I knew of you, you were an escaped—well, never mind. And now you're a criminologist, eh7”
“Right. I've been a number of things this morning, Doctor. But you, at least, have the real lowdown on me, now. But, have you time to talk with me on this wired? If not, I can, of course, get some Chicago State's Attorney's man—plus a policeman—to come up to your place with me—and we can all talk things out—right in your office.”
“Oh, talk all you want, my man, on the phone—whether you've got a tap-in on the circuit or not. For I've nothing to conceal or hide. What do you want to know?”
“There is no tap-in on this circuit,” I told him. “Frankly, I'm talking from a telephone booth. Because at this juncture of things I think it best to talk with you privately.”
“All right. I'll believe you. Go ahead, then.”
“Doctor, do you recall employing a little girl named Effie Hampton, some 4 years ago, as office girl? A little girl—an orphan—who came up to Chicago from Missouri somewhere? In fact, she'd won the State Spelling Championship of Missouri. And she saw an ad of yours on her first day in Chicago—for a reception-room girl—evidently someone, Doctor, had sold you on the possible increased business a pretty young girl might bring you—anyway, you took her on?”
“Certainly, all this is true. But what of it?”
“Well, is it true that you paid Effie Hampton $7 a week for 3 months—but with a verbal agreement that at the end of the 3 months you'd pay her $15 a week? And that at the end of that 3 months, you told her if she'd continue to help you out, at $7—you'd marry her at the end of 2 years?”
“If it were so,” he replied with calm contemptuousness, “it would be my business, wouldn't it?”
“Well, not of course, Doctor, with that insane wife you tell me you then had in Elgin Insane Asylum! But anyway—isn't it true that this kid was carried away by the chance to marry such an erudite and medically well-educated man; had dreams, no doubt, of building you up professionally—and that she died of malnutrition at the end of a year? Trying to live on that $7 a week? Cooking over a gas jet? Eating just crackers at night?”
“If you are asinine enough to expect me to admit all these allegations you're setting forth, you're plenty asinine! But I don't know that I can stop you from looking up visible records in the case of the death of Effie Hampton. Nor care to stop you, moreover. The records do say she died of malnutrition. So—what? And some convent in St. Louis did telegraph a hundred dollars to bury her. Again—so what? For all of this has nothing to do with me. I'm not involved in her death. There's no law covering what I have to pay office girls. And besides—Effie Hampton worked only part time for me. She was free to get other employment—in the balance of her time—if she could.”
“That's what you say, Doctor—only the case happens to be that she worked full time—and overtime. For that paltry sum. And since you refuse to admit, categorically or otherwise, all of the foregoing facts I enunciated, I'm going to state that all I've set forth is exactly what happened. And now I'm going to tell you how I know the whole lowdown on this—and how I got dragged into it. You didn't know, did you, that Effie had a sister in St. Louis? A sister named Agatha? To whom she wrote almost every daily detail in her life?”
“Including, evidently,” MacPherson said sardonically, “the description of my sister who stayed with Effie the first night she came to Chicago?”
“Yes, that's right. Effie did write her sister all about that night when Monda got in Chicago late from Texas—and about your fixing it for her to stay with Effie that night. Effie even told her sister of the 'queer Monda's' explanation and description of her lucky fetishes—that birthmark under her breast that 'brought her health,' as she claimed—and the scar on her hip that brought her 'continuous good luck.' “
“Well, proceed on,” MacPherson said gruffly. “If this is a police inquisition, I sure wish you luck. No, I didn't know that Effie Hampton had a sister, and moreover, don't believe it—for she told me everything about herself.”
“Yes, Doctor, but you happened to blow off some steam right after Effie started to work for you—about nuns, and priests, and so forth—particularly nuns! Told her you wouldn't have anything to do with anybody who was even related to a 'damned nun.' “
“Oh-oh! Then she had a sister that's a nun, eh?”
“Yes, a sister then in a convent there. A civilized sort of convent, moreover, in which the sisters could receive all the mail they wanted—uncensored by the Mother Superior. Though, by its specific rules, they could write no letters except twice a year. It was the Mother Superior of that convent who telegraphed the hundred dollars to the police department here—to bury Effie. And the reason Effie's sister didn't show up at her funeral was because she was desperately ill at the time Effie died—out of her head for weeks—and when she did finally get well, the Mother Superior told her about her sister's death in Chicago from malnutrition—and how the convent had provided quietly for her burial—and commanded Agatha, for the sake of the convent, not to attempt to follow up the matter any further. Which of course Agatha—realizing the futility of such a thing anyway—never did, as you yourself well realize, Doctor, since you've never received any inquiries from her.” I paused. “But going back to when Effie was still alive—she wrote her cloistered sister all about your magnanimous deal with respect to ultimately marrying her. Telling Agatha, however, that she was not saying anything about Agatha till she had married you. And taken you to St. Louis and shown you how sweet her sister was—which, Doctor, happens to be the case. Of course she lied, and said that she could live 'scrumptiously' in Chicago for $7 a week.”
“Shouting about that $7 again, are you? Well, Effie Hampton had a right to sue me for breach of promise—had she lived.”
“Only she had not a line of writing of yours. And besides, Doctor, she died. But anyway, Doctor, her sister has become a friend of mine. Oh, yes, she's still a nun. And I've read all of Effie's letters to Agatha. And those letters sure are the chance for a bright but unpromoted assistant criminal investigator—to make his mark.”
“How? If I may ask?”
“Well, Doctor, in one of those letters she wrote to her sister—it's dated, incidentally, September 13th, four years back, same day the Trell Yocum murder broke!—she tells Agatha that she is sending her a jade crucifix which an old Chinaman—a converted Chinaman of course—had given her: this old Chinaman was a client of yours, Doctor—you may remember him—and he'd handed the crucifix to Effie, with his compliments, on leaving the office the afternoon before, just after having had a Cowper operation done by you, and just, incidentally, as the office was closing up for the day. And in this letter, Doctor, she finishes exactly thus—but just a minute, Doctor, till I get the penciled transcript of its ending out of my pocket. Yes, I have it in hand now—and I'll take the liberty of reading it.” And I proceeded to read forth the penciled words that were on the half sheet of paper that had been in my breast pocket:
“No doubt, Sister Mine, since they let you have newspapers there in the Convent, you will—before you've even got this—have read about our sensational Steenhammer Murder here on Chicago's Northwest Side—and become alarmed that I live in such a wicked city as I do. I do not yet myself know the full circumstances of this new murder—Doctor and I heard the newsboy down below our window yelling 'Brutal Murder,' and Doctor sent me down for a paper which he now has, and therefore all the details it contains!—but the last-minute report coming in on the radio (for Doctor—bless his heart!—let me install an old second-hand radio last week) is that the victim is just being identified. Unfortunately the news flashes were cut off by a program coming in on the wave-length—but Doctor has given me another 3 cents, and orders to run downstairs as soon as the boy starts yelling loudly again, showing that a new consignment of papers is on the stand, with the new developments. Which, therefore, will give me an opportunity to mail this downstairs, and to add one final injunction, before sealing it, that you are positively not to worry about me, Agatha darling, because Chicago is a city so full of crime, since I live in a quiet rooming house on a quiet street—and all these criminal things occur in spheres that do not touch mine, and amongst and by people whom I never even come in contact with. And—but a patient is coming in, so I will close now—and will write again, in a few days. Love. Effie.”
“And that,” I said, placing the penciled notes back in my pocket, “is the way that letter ended.”
“And because I bought a copy of the newspaper—er, two copies—so what?”
“Well, Doctor, from all I've learned of your personality both through meeting you—and from Effie's ever-friendly prattle to her sister—I'd say that the millennium had arrived—when you bought two fresh newspapers! However, such has no ultra-legal significance of any sort. No. What is of significance is the fact that Effie called that murder the Steenhammer Murder. For since it never got to be known in any Chicago papers whatsoever as the Steenhammer Murder, Effie Hampton was a jump ahead of the real facts in even terming it such. Indeed, the only inference possible is that she heard it called that by you.”
“How would you make that out, may I ask?” MacPherson's voice was scornful.
“Well,” I told MacPherson slowly, “the radio had just told Effie Hampton and you—so she wrote—that the victim was just being identified. And the newsflash program was then cut off. And you had the only paper containing the full details. What little she knew of the murder, she had read in the heads, bringing it upstairs for you. So the only guess possible is that when you told her to run downstairs the minute the boy yelled loudly again, and buy the newest developments in that murder—you spoke of it as 'the Steenhammer Murder.' Which meant that you, too, Doctor, had made an assumption that
was a jump ahead of real facts—in assuming that the dead man could he named 'Steenhammer.' “
The doctor gave a throaty laugh—the laugh of a man who was sitting on top of the world.
“What a fool I'll make of you, Kirby, in due course.”
“Yes? Well, Doctor, you'll be making more of a fool of a good Catholic sister—who happens to possess brains as well as beauty. For during all these years, this sister has ruminated puzzledly and bewilderedly as to how on earth Effie had happened to call it the Steenhammer Murder. Particularly since, when the full story of the crime broke, even on papers in the convent, it was shown that the bungalow where the murder occurred had merely been bought by a man named T. Parker Yocum from a man named Louis Steenhammer—and that T. Parker Yocum, driving up about an hour or so after the victim had been found, had identified the dead man at once as Trell Yocum. Why, Doctor, that murder never became known as the Steenhammer Murder. It—”
“Now you listen,” said Dr. MacPherson. “I remember well the incidents of the morning which that fool letter appears to set forth. And you and this damned nun are both welcome to take that letter to the forthcoming congress of America's State and District Attorneys, if you so wish. For if you'll refer back, my smart popinjay, to that day and date, you will find that an Ida Stein, a millinery worker, had been attacked and killed, near the mouth of an alley, in Ravenswood, the third day before, presumably by a Negro. With a hammer, my boy! With a hammer. And he beat her brains out. Well, I had been following that Stein Hammer Murder. And I did ask Effie to go out and get me a paper with the latest developments of the Stein Hammer Murder.”
“Oh—you did? But Doctor, you overlook the fact that Effie Hampton had won the Missouri State Spelling Championship. Before she came up here. Spelling, Doctor, was her meat! She was like all such perfect spellers, sensitive to every kind of pronunciation. Every inflection. She would never, in a thousand years, Doctor, have written Steenhammer Murder Case—had you said Stein Hammer-Murder. For two reasons. One, the pronunciation of the first word. The other, the accent of the words. She took you at your exact pronunciation of it. For 'Steenhammer' is exactly what she wrote. And, Doctor, it lived for these several years in the mind of a nun!”
“Well, my good criminological investigator friend, from Indianapolis, Indiana—all this is of academic interest, in case you care to take it up with someone who knows more about criminal law than you evidently do. So what do you want of me specifically, after all?”
“Well, I want to know, naturally, why was it that, when you told me the story of the Trell Yocum Murder a half hour or so ago, you didn't include the subsidiary facts that the house in Harlem Heights had been previously owned by a chap named Louis Steenhammer? Who lived there all alone? And that mysterious callers used to come and visit him—and wait there for him—at least according to the testimony of an old buildings' material watchman on the further side of that block of prairie, who would see the house light up, often, even before Louis Steenhammer himself, cane and all, came strolling along homeward along the narrow sidewalk? For that, of course, Doctor, showed that certain individuals knew where some key of the house was kept—or hung—or secreted.” I paused. “Why, Doctor, did you mention none of this?”
“Why should I include all that, you damned fool? Louis Steenhammer had nothing to do with the murder, one way or the other. He had sold the house a week before to T. Parker Yocum—turned the money over to some bondswoman who had gone his bond on some kind of criminal case—and had gotten out of the country. From the facts in the previous matter, he was probably in South America by the time that Yocum was murdered. So why should I include facts so irrelevant to the main story of the Yocum murder as that? If I'd been out to do that, I'd have told you of the wart on the nose of the prosecutor who convicted Sam Jafferson.”
“I see,” I commented. “Well, you will admit, won't you, Doctor, that Louis Steenhammer cleared out while you were at the Aural and Ophthalmological Convention held that year in New York from September 4th to September 10th—your one luxury, Effie once told her sister, those conventions, to and from which you always rode sitting up all night in a day coach.”
“Well, maybe I was in New York between those dates. I was at that convention, anyway. So if the convention was September 4th to September 10th, then obviously I was out of Chicago when the Steenhammer fellow got out of it. But what the hell, my good friend, has the one thing to do with the other?”
“Well, it could have a lot, Doctor. For Louis Steenhammer, it seems to me, was very much involved in that murder—rather, the full story of it. He wasn't an opera singer—or clergyman, you know! He was a drug peddler! And he'd been arrested as such. And he claimed he got his narcotics from 42 different doctors in Chicago. And the government had said that if he named the 42 doctors he got his cocaine and morphine from—it would promise him a mere one year's sentence.”
“Yeah? Well, if it interests you any, and if you imply I had to buy narcotic drugs from this Steenhammer, let me say I'm allowed all the cocaine I want, to contract nose linings for examination. And all the morphine I need for tonsillectomies, etc. And my records moreover are complete of operations performed.”
“Too complete, Doctor! For Effie also told her sister that you were 'a very sensitive man'—so much so that you regularly made records showing a far huger practice than you really did have, so that, in case you should die, you wouldn't be known as a 'poor stick of a doctor.' And Effie, poor kid, wanted to build you up eventually to having just that kind of a practice!” I paused. “Though, if it cheers you up any, Doctor, we haven't got that particular letter. No—a fact.” I paused again. “No, Doctor, what I was trying to imply a minute or so back was that maybe you were selling Brother Steenhammer some of the narcotic drugs that you didn't use up—in some of the operations that you didn't perform!”
“Oh, so that's it, is it? Well, Effie is dead—and the records of all my operations—kept in good ink, even if the patients are not findable today—are available. And as for drugs and drug-selling, my good friend, my word is as good as any damned drug peddler—trying to save his miserable skin by involving reputable medical men by the scores.”
“Well, you're right on that point, at that! And now that Louis Steenhammer is vanished for good, your records are the McCoy. And so—but, Doctor, you're not busy, are you? If you are, I'll—”
“No, no, no. Go ahead. I hope you're getting a full transcript of this conversation.”
“I'm not, Doctor, I told you. I am right in a phone booth three blocks down on Clark Street.” I paused. “So now I come, Doctor, to another question. Do you recall once a young girl, Margaret Trumbull, dying from a tonsillectomy you had performed on her early in the morning? That is, around 7:30 o'Clock?”
“Certainly. For they do die. About I in 5,000. It can't be helped. What about it?”
“Well, now, Doctor, that girl wasn't, by any chance, one of Louis Steenhammer's girl friends, was she?—on whom you performed—an abortion? Abortion, you know, is a mighty profitable side-line for a doctor! And—you know?—those queer black shades in your office—though they appear to be for ophthalmological purposes—they're awfully black and shut-out-ish. And—then again—doing a tonsillectomy a half hour or an hour before regular hours began—well—you know at that time the All-Night Professional Brothers up around your corner hadn't yet amalgamated?”
“Why, you fool, don't people—such as the Trumbull girl—ever want to get away on night trains—and want a full day's rest in bed to make sure they're not going to have a hcmorrhage7”
“Yes, to be sure. All sorts of complications are possible in one's personal affairs—and prospective movements. But I just wondered now, if, by any chance, you had prepared to perform an abortion on Louis Steenhammer's girl friend—he being, of course, the man who got her 'that way'—and if she'd died on you right there on the table. And if you and Louis sprang the table back up into a dental chair, and propped her up in it, and, while she was still warm, you yanked out one tonsil? The reason I ask this is because you, allegedly the stingiest man in Chicago, on the evening of May 4th, 4 years ago, actually gave Effie Hampton—yes, she wrote this to her sister—a day's vacation, the day to be
the next day—or May 5th. That is, you bought her, out of your own purse, a round-trip
ticket for Milwaukee, on the excursion steamer Dilldale, leaving the Goodrich docks at 7 in the morning. And gave her $5 to spend. All of which, Doctor, might have been for the purpose of insuring that your office be 'office-girl-less' next day—in case complications ensued in a $100 or so operation—”
“- for abortion?” he put in, with a throaty laugh. “I suggest, Kirby, that you sift Margaret Trumbull's ashes—she was, I well recall it, cremated—and put her together again—and find out whatever you can!”
“Alas, Doctor, I can't. She being, as you say, cremated. And an official victim of death from heart failure under a tonsillectomy. But now, Doctor, this question puts itself before the house: Did you know enough of Louis Steenhammer's weak character to know that he would assuredly crack—on the matter of the giving of the names of those 42 physicians—that maybe he was in love with some girl—no, not the Trumbull girl that had died, but some other one—and that Steenhammer wanted to stay on in America, not be a fugitive? And that—yes, I'm merely postulating for the sake of argument that you were one of those 42 physicians Steenhammer claimed to have gotten his dope from—but I'm postulating at the same time that you—with your voluminous 'operation records'—had a first-rate chance to beat his allegations. Yes. But the question that puts itself before the house, Doctor, is whether you figured that, if he cracked on the matter of the dope, he wouldn't go all the way and crack on that abortion, too? And that you'd get life in the pen? Yes. I keep wondering if, when you came back from the Medical Convention that morning of September 12th, 4 years ago, you worked all day thoughtfully—you did work that day, you know, for the last patient out before closing on September 12th was a Chinaman!—Effie's letter!—yes—well, anyway—I wonder if you went out shortly after midnight that night to Louis Steenhammer's place—only, alas! unknown to you, he'd sold it suddenly, meanwhile, and cleared out—and if you used the key that always hung in some secret place—and went in—and found him asleep on the couch—and went across the room—and put your chloroform on his face—and then hooked your drill—not Sam Jafferson's drill!—to the lamp and drilled him in the head? Only, alas, Doctor, it must have been Trell Yocum whom you must have drilled—and not Louis Steenhammer! And then—well—that's all. Did you, I wonder, do all this—and then go blithely away, thinking you'd saved yourself?”
“Listen, you poor fool, are you going into nickel-novel writing after you leave the Indianapolis Criminological Bureau—or wherever it is you're employed?”
“No. I'm only working out suggestions which grew in my mind when the initial suggestion was put into my hands by a woman who loved little Effie Hampton—her sister—and who through these several years has figured that something was off-key—in the matter of your pre-knowledge of the word 'Steenhammer.' And who, in due course, though more or less accidentally, contacted me—with some ability to handle such problems as these.”
“Well, all I can say is that you tell the charming cloistered lady to go back to her bead-saying. And not try to write detective theses—with squirts like yourself looking for advancement.” The doctor paused wrathfully. “I presume you think that by tossing a little notoriety on me, you'll become more well-hee—but maybe it's money you're wanting from me?”
“No, I don't want any of your money, Doctor. I told you today that I didn't envy McAllister Thane, the richest guy in the world, his billion-dollar fortune—and I don't envy you everything you may have. Indeed, I may have a fortune of my own before midnight tonight—maybe and maybe not! But I'll tell the charming cloistered lady all you just told me to tell her. And now I want to ask you something else. Have you ever heard of Caspar Lucas?”
“Lucas?” the man on the other end repeated. “Caspar Lucas? Caspar Lucas? Well, I've certainly heard the name somewhere. Yes. What of him?”
“Well, I thought you'd be bound to have run across the name somewhere—sometime. But I just wanted to be sure in my own mind you'd heard it. Well, Doctor, Caspar Lucas has written a book. It's called: Criminal Identification Through Stigmata in Wounds and Traumae. It's a very modern study in criminology, Doctor, so much so that it doesn't even bother to touch in any way on the science of ballistics—bullets and bullet wounds, that is—but confines itself to a purely new field: the field of stab wounds, cutting wounds, etc.”
“I—see.” MacPherson paused. “And what about it?” But there was a slightly troubled note in his voice now.
“Well, Doctor, there happens to be a whole section of Caspar Lucas' book devoted to stab wounds in bone, and the edges of sabers and piercing instruments—with a purely hypothetical chapterette on the micro-examination of drill holes, and the micro-examination of drilling instruments. Showing by dozens of photos how an inlay can be made from such holes—and an outlay from suspected instruments—and not only the pitch of the thread of such a suspected instrument—if it be a drill—identified, but the existence of microscopic scratches on it, or nicks in its thread.”
“And—” MacPherson was silent.
“And—” I paused. “Well, Doctor, I managed to get the skull of Trell Yocum dug up in Indianapolis—oh, no, not that skull I had in there a while ago—that skull was bought for five bucks from a medical student—and I've had the drill hole in Trell Yocum's head examined with the new hyper-microscope—rather, should I say, to be precise, the drill-hole's almost microscopic contents.”
“Why, if I may ask?” The Doctor's words were more assured than they had been a minute or so back.
“Why? Well, did you know, Doctor, that the bone-cells—though particularly the alveolar or tooth-process cells—of the three races, Negro, Chinese and White man, show themselves to be shaped differently when viewed in the hyper-microscope?”
“I'll take it on trust,” he retorted dignifiedly. “I saw the hyper-microscope exhibited by the Northwestern Criminological Laboratory at the Medical Arts Convention here.”
“Well, I'm glad you saw that. Because you'll believe me when I say there are a few specks—after all these years—inside the drill hole in Trell Yocum's skull—which show that tooth dust—or alveolar dust—from a Chinaman lies within that hole. Just about 5 specks, Doctor. Five precious specks! Rhombohedral cells, under the hyper-microscope. And that shows, doesn't it, that the drill used on Yocum's head was a Cowper bone-threading burr—and that it had been last used on a Chinaman—and that it hadn't been wiped off—exactly as you failed to wipe off that one that you so obligingly used this morning for me?”
“Well, what of that? You damned fool—you don't think you can arrest a man, do you, on five stinking microscopic specks in an old skull hole?”
“No, I certainly don't. Much less convict him. But, Doctor, here's the real point. The specks merely show that a Cowper alveolar drill was used. But the inside of the drill hole itself shows the pitch of the thread of that drill—for the drill went way in, you know. And the thread doesn't tally in pitch with any standard Cowper alveolar drill on the market today. Much less with the machinist's drill—yes, poor Sam Jafferson's—which was supposed to have made the hole. The threads, moreover, have certain microscopic—though merely ordinarily microscopic—scratches in them, too. Showing that certain tiny imperfections were in the steel that made them.”
“Yeah? And—so what?”
“Well, I heard you say today you bought that Cowper alveolar drill of yours for fifty cents—at an auction of the instruments of your old professor. Who had made all his own tools. And so, Doctor, I want now to give you a break. It's a very simple matter, you understand, to slit this gold Cowper tube that's in this skull—draw the sides of the tube inward with an instrument—and remove the tube neatly without destroying the drill hole or injuring the bone threads that it now lies in. And if the hole you drilled in this skull here shows the identical pitch of thread—and the same microscopic scratches—as that hole in Trell Yocum's head—well, Doctor, you know, don't you, that you'll go to the electric chair?”
“You mean—that—that if—if they tallied—I—I would be electrocuted?” MacPherson's voice was sick with terror.
“Why, of course, Doctor. A fact! Never in this world could you explain how your drill got into Trell Yocum's brain. You could destroy the drill, to be sure—but I've got the hole it made only this morning.” I paused. “However, Doctor, if the thread can't be in any way the same—then just hold your drill—don't destroy it, whatever you do—for I am then one big fool—and Agatha Hampton is probably a bigger one. It's really, Doctor, something for you to figure out. I'm giving you the breaks.”
I heard him sighing terribly in the instrument. A deep, rasping sigh. As of a man emotionally harried.
“Well, Doctor,” I put in at length, “can—can you come clean? Because, Doctor, I'm on my way to the State's Attorney's office now, you see, and I want to know how much of an ass I'm going to be.”
I heard nothing but silence. The ticking of his desk clock.
Then suddenly a deep hollow boom.
Like a gun discharging.
“Hello—hello—hello—” I said.
No answer.
I hung up.
And waited. My face burning with apprehension.
Then I called the number again. Using that third slug which I had purchased for another connection entirely.
A strange voice answered.
“May I speak to Doctor MacPherson,” I began. “I was just—”
“Sorry,” came the reply, “but I'll have to ask you to hang up.”
“Hang up?” I repeated. “But why? And who is speaking?”
“This is Doctor Dove speaking—whose office is across the hall from Dr. MacPherson's. Dr. MacPherson is dead. Yes—he just blew his brains out. So please hang up, if you will—so I can call the police!”
Whew!
I stood out on the curbing in front of that drugstore. Thinking—thinking!
Doctor MacLeish MacPherson had written a more drastic ending on the chapter than I had dreamed. But it was all proper and fitting.! He had merely carried out his own execution. And certified his own guilt by 100 per cent. I stood a moment longer shaking my head. And then, shifting that incriminating skull under my arm, I went up the street.
Two blocks farther I found another drugstore. This one was just opening up. And the clock in its window said 7:40.
I bought three slugs here—in case my conversation should be extended too long, and Central might conclude to take her full pound of flesh. And I went into the phone booth. Which was triply glassed like that other booth in which I had just talked—and which, like the other, was far up front in the store. Luck seemed to be with me today so far as confidential conversations went!
Of the two numbers in the telephone book after T. Parker Yocum's name, at 7223 Parnell Avenue, I dialed the lower one—the one which did not, as did the upper, carry the suffix “Commercial Photographer.”
“T. Parker Yocum, please,” I asked, when the receiver raised.
“Pardon me,” came a man's voice, “but this is Mr. Yocum's man-about-house speaking. Mr. Yocum is engaged on some very exacting developing work in his studio upstairs, and left instructions that anyone calling should ring him on the studio phone, Parnell 9845. Or, if you wish, I'll deliver any message to him when I go upstairs, in twenty minutes or so, with the morning's mail.”
“No,” I said, “I'll call him on the other phone. I just didn't think he'd be at work so early.” And I hung up. And dialed the number which, it seemed, I should have dialed.
Again the receiver raised.
“T. Parker Yocum?” I asked.
The voice at the other end came back clear, sharp—and breezy. “Hello, Peter Symonds! I've been sitting here waiting your call.”
“You have? Why, T. Parker?”
“Why, because you promised to ring me sometime this morn—but first, you're talking from the Eastman Kodak Supply Company offices, of course?”
“No, T. Parker. For one thing, the offices haven't opened up yet. I suppose Time doesn't exist for you when you're developing prints, eh? And for the second thing, I'm taking a day off. I'm in a drugstore right now.”
“Good! Then the switchboard girl down there won't be listening in on us. For you see, Peter, I don't want to register a complaint—much less let a complaint leak in above your head—without taking it up with you privately first. And here it is—the complaint! Peter, this last gallon of hydrocyanic acid solution you sold me is, I think, spoiled. Rather, tainted in some way. And it will ruin all my color photo-prints if I use it.”
“What makes you think it's spoiled, T. Parker? Or rather tainted?”
“Well, Peter, I'll tell you why. I just poured out a wineglassful—I've got the wineglassful here now at my elbow—and when I hold it up to the light it has a slightly discolored—a bluish tinge—that I've not seen in it before.”
“I see. Well, T. Parker, are those expensive color prints you're at work on this morning?”
“God, yes, Peter. It's that entire set of insect life for the new Encyclopedia of Nature. If I ruin them, I'll be sunk. I'm to get a big fee for my work on that set, you know.”
“Yes, of course. Well, listen, T. Parker, haven't you one of the set that you can afford to spoil?”
“Well—I have two of the African Tse-Tse Fly.”
“Oh, yes. Well, I honestly don't believe that that prussic acid is tainted, T. Parker. The bluish tint must just come from some inert ingredient. Why not carry the poorest tse-tse-fly print through—and see if you get a good final color print? If not—well, then it's time enough, isn't it, for us to put in a kick to the manufacturers—when you find the HCN's n.g. for fine photographic purposes?”
“We-ell—I suppose it is, Peter. I'll do just what you say, however. And now what's on your mind, Peter?”
“Several things, T. Parker. For one thing, you won't be offended at my asking, will you, something about an old matter in your past affairs—that will of your cousin, Trell Yocum?”
“Why, Petey—what—what the devil would that be of interest to you—for?”
“For several reasons, T. Parker, it would. For something which has crossed my affairs crosses yours slightly—rather, crosses yours, as they relate to your cousin. However, if you'll let me ask you a question or two—I'll then explain. And even tell you something surprising, probably.”
“Sure, Petey. Fire ahead! Facts are facts—and you're welcome to any I have.”
“Well, T. Parker, am I not correct in assuming that by that old Trell Yocum will under which you inherited some money some years ago, you were to inherit the money—that is, if he died—providing you were a bachelor? But that if you were married, some 3 bachelor friends of his in Melbourne were to inherit it?”
“Yes, that's right, Petey.”
“But you married, didn't you, T. Parker, after his estate went into probate?”
“I'll say! Yes—sir. Right while it was still in probate. For I sure loved the girl. Or thought I did. In fact, Petey, 'twas because of my wife's wishes that I sold the bungalow I'd just bought in Harlem Heights—Trell's murder, having taken place there, you know, gave her the jitters. But alack—she and I are divorced now. In case you had in mind that I
was merely separated from the former Mrs. Yocum. I'm divorced—as divorced as myself and my former snug little home there on the prairies, which I wish I had back!—and she's remarried.”
“I see.” I was silent,
“Well, Petey,” he put in, “what the hell is all this about, anyway?”
“T. Parker,” I said, after a long pause, “it appears I called you up just as you were expecting a call from a different man. Evidently the bird who sells you your photographic supplies. And so I guess I'll have to divulge something now. Namely, that I'm not Peter Symonds—whoever he may be.”
“You're not?” repeated T. Parker Yocum. “Well, damn it, come to think of it now, your voice is different. Well—who the hell are you? For you must know me.”
“No, T. Parker, I don't know you. Not personally. But I know all about you, though. First, however, my name is Jack Ernst.”
“Jack Ernst? Well, I don't know you.”
“Naturally! I'm a sneakthief. And plain every-day crowbar burglar, T. Parker—the kind who uses a jimmy on a window or a door—and picks up all he can!”
I could hear him radiate silence. At last he replied.
“Yeah? Well, Ernst—what—what do you think you want with me?”
“Just this, Yocum. Or suppose I continue calling you T. Parker? And you can call me Jack. Yes? Well, T. Parker, I want to tell you something that only you and I, in the entire world, know. T. Parker, that night back four years ago—the night Trell Yocum was supposedly murdered—I and a pal—Charlie Brister—fixed to rob that bungalow of yours—out there in Harlem Heights. You can look Charlie Brister up, if you want—in the Chicago or St. Louis police records—he's down in both; and, in fact, you can look me up too, in the St. Louis police department records—and you'll find plenty on me.”
“Say, listen—am I supposed to stand here and,, gas with a burglar?
“You'd better, T. Parker—if you know what's, best for you! Now pay attention. I'm trying to make this mighty brief. T. Parker, Charlie Brister had heart disease. A mighty bad form of it, too. Never heard of a burglar with heart disease, did you? Well, they have ailments just the same as other people. And, like other people, they have to live! Anyway, T. Parker, I played lookout that night, outside the front of your bungalow, and let Charlie crash the joint. And by crash the joint, T. Parker, I mean simply to walk right in through those Florentine doors that fronted on that low cement porch outside your big living-room. For those doors were ajar a half inch or so—and it looked almost too damn suspiciously easy to Charlie. Anyway, T. Parker, it was Charlie who crashed your joint. Charlie—dressed as he always used to dress on a job—like a gentleman—and wearing no lid. For Charlie always went without a lid, T. Parker—claimed that the cops never picked up a man strolling along without a hat. Charlie was armed, however, I don't mind telling you—with a gat with a Pasabee silencer on its muzzle—if you know what that is. And if you don't, let me say that the sound of a shot out of a gat with a Pasabee silencer isn't as loud as a cork coming out of a 1-ounce bottle of soothing syrup. Right! Well, to make this story short, T. Parker, Charlie never came out! I couldn't know what was going on inside, because those Florentine doors were covered by thick drapes—and Charlie had given me my strict orders to stick out by that street. But from things that afterward happened, it isn't hard to figure what did take place. There's no doubt he went into that living-room—snapped on one of the lamps—and that a man, asleep on the couch, wakened suddenly—sat up—and that Charlie, with that hopelessly bum heart he had, fell dead. And that Yocum—Trell Yocum—sprang up, picked up Charlie's gat which Charlie undoubtedly dropped, felt Charlie's pulse—saw he was dead—and then laid him on the couch. And that—no—don't hang up. But get it all, T. Parker. For Trell Yocum—not Charlie—stepped out of those Florentine doors a few moments later—that gat of Charlie's in his mitt!—evidently to see whether this strange intruder might have had a pal or lookout out there. Not so dumb, that Australian ex-American! But that pal and lookout, a bit suspicious now, was up on that low porch—and not out near the sidewalk in front of the house. And I gave it to him, T. Parker. With a blackjack! He dropped the gat—sure, I grabbed it—and he staggered off the low porch onto the yard, blood running down his face. And lurched dazedly across the prairie, in the general direction of those railroad tracks, that lie a quarter of a mile or so northward. I didn't follow him, of course. In fact, I beat it—damn quick. For I saw what I thought was a police squad car roaring down the lonely street from the south. As it happened, it wasn't—but I thought it was. And I thought that the guy I'd just sloughed out had called the cops before he stepped out. At that moment I was cert he'd shot and killed Charlie. With no more sound, in view of that silencer, than a piece of kindling wood breaking in two.
“But—no wait, T. Parker!—next day I read of the murder of Trell Yocum. By a drill. And how you had arrived home—identified your cousin —”
“Listen here,” T. Parker Yocum broke in harshly, “is this a fairy story?”
“It sounds like it, doesn't it, T. Parker?—but it won't in a minute. So you'd better hear it all through.” And I pressed on. “Yes, T. Parker, you identified that body of my pal as your cousin—instead of coming out with the truth and letting the cops know you'd never seen him before in your life. Easy enough, all right, for as I told you, Charlie always dressed like a gentleman—but never carried a line on him that could identify him. And the only two persons who had seen your cousin and talked with him were right then on a train heading for the Pacific Coast, one bound for Alaska, and the one to go aboard his battleship. What I figure, T. Parker—don't hang up now, for otherwise I'll come over there in person in order to finish this—is that when you first came in, and found the cops, and found that a man was murdered—and that it wasn't your cousin—was that you thought that it was Trell who had done it. Thoughts must have been buzzing pretty wildly in your brain at that moment, but if you could think clearly at all, you may have figured that the victim was some fellow that Trell had met on the train coming to Chicago—that he'd given Trell the name of the hotel he was going to stop at—and that Trell had called him up and asked him to run out there. And that for some quite unaccountable reason Trell, using some kind of a drill or instrument in his luggage, had killed the fellow. Maybe your identification of the victim as Trell was just to give Trell a break to get away. Later on, however, the joyful fact struck you square between the eyes that by that identification you virtually had Trell's fortune. Yes. For Trell couldn't come back and upset your identification—he'd go to the electric chair if he did. And you know the rest of the story. The police picked up Sam Jafferson—and the prosecutor convicted him of murder. And still you kept your mouth shut. For by that time Trell's fortune was yours—at least it was being probated preparatory to turning it over to you—and Trell himself, wherever he was, was quite out of luck. And so finally Sam Jafferson was electrocuted. All this happening, T. Parker, simply because you don't come forward when you first entered that house—and tell the cops that the dead man on the couch wasn't Trell at all. And if you had, of course, they'd have found quickly that he had a police record—had a dangerous and fatal form of heart disease, too—for I happen to know that's on his pedigree at headquarters also. And the cops might have figured out pretty accurately what really did happen. And given the world an inkling that Trell Yocum, with his memories of himself as Trell Yocum gone—for I slugged him pretty hard—is alive somewhere on this globe today. And as for Sam Jafferson—or whoever slapped chloroform on my pal's face, dead as he was already, and drilled his brain—it would have come out then that he had only 'killed' an already 'dead' man! Drilled, that is, into the sconce of a dead burglar. And Jafferson would almost certainly have been acquitted. At least of the specific charge of murder, anyway. But you, T. Parker, let Jafferson go to the chair—so that you could get Trell's 6000 pounds sterling, and, moreover, immediately marry that girl you wanted to marry—without the 6000 pounds being thereby diverted to Trell's Melbourne heirs. And—”
“Listen here—Ernst, you say your name is?—supposing this were even true—was Sam Jafferson a buddy of yours'“
“God no, T. Parker. Jafferson was an honest machinist. I'm a sneakthief and burglar. No, T. Parker. I'm not trying to avenge Jafferson's death. But Charlie Brister had a $500 life insurance policy, payable to his wife. And, of course, his kid. I couldn't come forward—and testify to the real truth. For a phony murder rap that was hanging over my head meant maybe life—if I couldn't beat that rap. Nor could Charlie's wife let the cops know anonymously that the murdered Trell Yocum was Charlie Brister—for they'd have come down on her, and put the screws to her—just a weak little thing she was, understand?—and she'd have cracked up, and wound up by incriminating me and landing me in their mitts. Oh, she knew cops—and she knew herself—and she knew exactly what would happen. So she wasn't willing to drop a hint that would sic them on her. A mighty square shooter Nell Brister was all right. And so, T. Parker—Nell and I had to take it on the chin—let you cash in—steal 6000 pounds sterling—through the use of Charlie Brister's murdered body.”
I was finished. And I waited to see what he had to say.
“Well,” he said slowly, “even if this fairy story were true—then so what, Ernst?”
“Just this, T. Parker. My rap is blown up now. The bird who really did the bumpoff they were trying to pin on me, has just gone into stir—for life. On his own confession, too! So I can come forward any time I want to—without going to the pen. Four long years, T. Parker, it took for that rap to blow up. And so now I'm in a position to step up on the Chicago State's Attorney's stand—and tell the whole truth of that night.”
“We-well, even if your fairy story were true, Trell's body—”
“Correct that, please. Charlie Brister's body.”
“Well, call him what you want—but he's been buried in Indianapolis for 4 long years. He's—he's only a skeleton.”
“Aye, old man! Only a skeleton. But with a silver plate on his right thigh bone. From an auto smash-up near Rochester, Minnesota. Where the Mayo Brothers gave him a free surgical fix-up. And all the records of that surgical fix-up, T. Parker, on file there at the Mayo Brothers! Including the radiographs. And those silver bone-tying plates, you know, T. Parker, are numbered—and dated. A fact. Why, T. Parker, my story will result in 'Trell Yocum's' exhumation—and those Mayo Brothers records will prove absolutely that you identified the body of one Charles MacNamara Brister as your own cousin!”
He was thoughtfully silent.
“Listen, Ernst, why not come out here—to where I live—and let's talk this thing over?”
“You mean maybe—that 3000 pounds sterling—half of what you got by that false identification—might be put in my poke?”
“Oh, don't—don't be ridiculous, Ernst. I'm a poor man today. You can find that out by getting a financial report on me. I've blown everything I had—including what I got from that bungalow out in Harlem Heights. I've nothing today but this rented house—and my little commercial photographic business.”
“In short, T. Parker, no big money is to be expected—from you? Just small change?”
“God knows, Ernst, I have no big money. If you could use maybe—a few hundred dollars—I might be able to raise that on—”
“Listen, T. Parker, the world doesn't think much of a sneak thief. But we have a certain code. I saw Charlie Brister's wife go into the con because of the lack of that five hundred bucks insurance—which she couldn't collect. And I saw her die from the con. And saw her kid go into an orphan asylum. The McAllister York Thane Orphanage—in case you want to check it up—back of the Yards here in Chi. Gwendolyn Brister was the kid's name.” I paused. “T. Parker,” I went on, “you wanted to marry, back there, 4 years ago. The girl looked mighty good to you at the moment—even though you and she are divorced now. But to marry her, T. Parker, you'd have to inherit Trell Yocum's cash estate then and there. And I—I helped you to do that very thing. Poor devil of a Trell Yocum. I thought it was you—at least the house-owner—that I was soaking that night; and it was he—just your guest. And he's wandering today somewhere, in all probability, minus his wits. T. Parker, by that false identification you virtually stole 6000 pounds from Trell Yocum's estate. Can you restore it?”
“I—I couldn't restore—6000 cents, Ernst.” He paused. Then went on, tonelessly, “However, if you're going to be hard, there's—there's nothing I can do, I suppose. It's grand larceny—sure—and it'll mean 5 years—but with good behavior, you know, I'll get off in 3½!“
“You're quite right on your stir mathematics,” I assured him. “For I once knocked off just that much of a 5-year stretch myself, for good behavior. However, T. Parker, you've forgotten something, I think. The criminal statutes of Illinois, you know, provide that anybody who wilfully and knowingly makes a false identification of a corpus delicti on which a man is subsequently convicted of murder and executed, is guilty of murder. So how do you think you'll like to sit on that hot seat—there in Joliet?”
“Wha-what—” he stammered, chokingly. “You—you—mean—listen, Ernst,” he begged, “come—come out here—and talk with me. I'll—”
“No, T. Parker, there isn't a chance. Even if you had the 6000 pounds. I don't want money any more, T. Parker. Right now, believe it or not, I'm flirting with a hundred grand. But that's another story. And if my flirtation doesn't pan out—I can prowl more houses. No, T. Parker, I intend to avenge Charlie Brister—or at least his wife. I've waited 4 long years—for that old rap to blow up. As I knew it would eventually. So I could come out safely in the open. I just wanted to see you squirm—like the dog you are. I'm on North Clark Street now. Yes. But on my way to the State's Attorney's. T. Parker, in 40 minutes you'll be in his offices—in 2 hours you'll be locked up without bail—and in 3 months you'll be in the hot seat—or in Joliet for life.”
I heard a long exhaled sigh.
“There's—” His voice was weak. “There's—no way—to fix this?”
“None, T. Parker. For I've come here to Chicago—just to see this thing through.”
“Well, will you—will you—well, will you wait—a second?”
He must have laid the receiver down. For I heard the sound of its deposit, and a silence followed.
The silence lengthened into several minutes.
And still he did not come back to the phone.
And I commenced to wonder—had he hastily called a taxicab—and was he flying right now panic-stricken from the minions of the State's Attorney's office—before even they had been notified?
I continued to wait, however, receiver to ear. Full seven or eight minutes more passed. And still he did not return to the phone.
So at last I hung up. And dialed that other number, which was not that of his studio.
The indisputable voice of his man-about-house who had answered me before, replied. Gone, however, was the deferential tone in his voice, for he just said hastily: “Yes?”
“May I speak to T. Parker Yocum?” I asked.
“Sorry,” he replied hastily, “but—no.”
“Why not? This is a friend of his, and I was just talking with—”
“Yes. Perhaps. But I'm sorry to say that Mr. Yocum just accidentally killed himself.”
“Accidentally killed hims-”
“Yes. He drank, by mistake, a wineglassful of hydrocyanic acid solution which he had poured out. At least that's what it says on the big bottle on his desk. And I happen to know that that chemical is immediately fatal. I found him dead—and the wineglass on the floor—a minute ago as I went in with the morning's mail. Now will you be so kind as to hang up, please, as I must notify both the doctor across the street—and the coroner. Thank you so much!”
I hung up in a daze.
It certainly looked as though guilty conscience killed more surely than bullets.
And for a full several minutes I stood in that booth, trying to grasp it all. Then with a helpless shrug of my shoulders, I went on out into the store.
There was a whole wall devoted to books: clothbound, paperbound, dime novels, what not. I stared at it, yet scarcely saw it.
But as I didn't survey the individual titles—for indeed I was still lost in that daze to think of how T. Parker Yocum had despatched himself, and, like MacLeish MacPherson, certified his guilt by 100 per cent—the clerk approached me.
“Anything I can do for you in the book line? I saw you looking over our titles.”
“Oh yes, I was,” I told him. “At least, looking at your big stock. Well, have you, by any chance, a copy of Caspar Lucas' book called, On a Slow Plane Across Amurricky—or Why Gals go to Hollywood?”
“Yes. Sure. Piles of 'em. Funniest thing, they say, that's been pulled in the last few months.” He reached into a rack below his counter and pulled forth a thin, cheap, clothbound book.
“This clothbound copy is fifty cents. We're out of the 25-cent paper edition.”
I paid him the half dollar and stowed the thin book inside my side coat pocket.
“How is it selling?” I asked.
“Best seller we've had here,” he replied, “among the cheap humor booklets. However, its sales have taken the inevitable final dip that, at least to us sellers of books, shows they've virtually reached saturation point—at least in the field that the book appeals to.” He put his elbows on the counter. And looked envious. “I understand it's the only thing the lucky beggar ever wrote—that he typed it off in about four hours—and that it fetched him $10,000 thus far.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “so I've heard too. I also read a little newspaper story to the effect that he's overdrawn on his publishers by a full thousand or so dollars—which means, of course, he's blown the ten thou'!”
“Owl Then they're holding the bag, eh?”
“I suppose they are. 'Specially since I read that he's trying his hand, for them, at a serious, melodramatic novel!”
“Charley Chaplin trying to play Hamlet, eh'“ the clerk suggested quizzically.
“I suppose,” I granted.
With which, I went forth into dingy Clark Street. And boarded a street car on which I stayed till I reached Randolph Street. And on which street I walked eastward till I came to the big Central Passenger Station at Michigan Avenue. A moment later I was in the big station itself. Undecidedly glancing toward the big train gates at one end, the ticket offices at one side, the telegraph offices and phone booths and writing tables at the other. And as I stood there, turning about in my mind several ideas, all of which clamored to be taken care of first, a man in a white tropical duck suit and white khaki cork helmet, who was bronzed to the color of ochre, and wearing a huge, plaid coat over his tropical garments, rushed up to me, suitcase in hand.
“Well, I'll be!” he said, bronzed face beaming. “Know me?”
“Well—now wait—” I scratched my chin.
“Oh you wouldn't, I guess. For I've been in Central Africa.7 long years. But I'd never forget you, Trell Yocum. Melbourne—six years ago—remember?—where and how we met last? If not, then it was the Travelers' Club dinner. Now do you remember?”
I held out my hand. “Sure-sure. It all comes back now, old man, when you mention the Travelers' Club dinner. Sure I remember you. But—but what—what are you doing—in Chicago?”
“Well what the devil, Trell Yocum, may I ask are you doing in Chicago?”
“You never heard—that I was here—4 years ago—and how I—”
“Hell fire, man, in Central Africa we hear nothing. What about it?”
I laughed grimly. “Oh—nothing now, old man. But what are you doing in Chicago?”
“Just rushing through. Into North Dakota. Brother very ill. Dying. In fact, Trell, my train has just been called. For I'm not flying westward, as it happens. The reason is—well, I flew to the coast of Africa when I heard about Bert's illness—and almost had a fatal crackup on landing. But managed to just board a liner—though with only my tropical clothes. Picked up this warm coat only in New York. Yes, I know I look a sight. Connected in New York within a few seconds, virtually, with a T.W.A. transport plane—and, believe it or not, Trell—we damned near cracked up again 30 minutes ago in landing on Municipal Airfield here. You can read about it in your noon papers today if you want. Anyway, that finishes me on flying. Yes—sir! For I see I've a flying jinx on me. Steam only for me—from now on. Yes, sir. And I do hope I make it—before Bert passes away. I
But at this juncture, the train caller called out: “Last call—for Black Hills Express—Black Hills Express—ready to pull out now!”
“Good-bye, Trell,” he said hastily. “Must rush. Write me, will you? Mandan, North Dakota.”
“I will,” I told him. “And I'm sure happy to have met you again.”
And I stood sadly looking after him as he rushed for Gate B, and his waiting train.
Once he was gone, I made my way over to the telegraph counter of the Postal-Union. And drew forth a telegram which was all printed out in ink, and in readiness in my breast pocket. And I read it carefully, word for word, even though I had already done that. It ran:
Guey Ming,
116 Lahola Street,
Honolulu, Hawaii.
I've carried out the whole thing exactly as you outlined, Ming. And those who did you injury in the long ago are now with their ancestors. Exactly as you predicted they would be. Now, Ming, for God's sake, tell me for a certainty who I am. I have a suspicion now, all right; but you alone, Ming, know. Tell me quick, man. These many years of amnesia haven't been a happy thing. Please, Ming, please—I beg of you to cable me back the few words that will put my mind to rest.
Harland Dryden.
I asked the girl for a government stamped envelope. Which she gave me, and I encased the telegram in it, sealed it, and wrote an address on it. After which, on one of the Postal-Union blanks, I wrote out a wire. And, completing it, read it carefully. Even to counting its words. It ran:
Macrae, Macrae and Macrae, Publishers,
286 Fourth Avenue,
New York City.
Use new telegram, going by mail, for the one appearing on manuscript page 206 of my manuscript. And be sure to let me see proofs of everything before locking up. Regards.
And I signed the wire:
Caspar Lucas.
I turned to the ever waiting girl.
“How much will 47 words to New York be, straight wire?”
“47words? And straight? That will be $2.30.
“Two-thirty, eh? And the airmail might—well, just a minute till I drop this letter in that box over there, and in case the airmail schedules are right, I'll probably—”
And leaving my wire there on the counter, I went over to the mailbox riveted to one of the pillars that studded the depot, mailed my sealed letter, and studied the airmail schedules that were listed on the box. After which I returned.
“I guess I'll just send this airmail,” I told her, a bit sheepishly.
At which I got the biggest surprise of my life. For she hauled forth an airmail envelope from under the counter and held it smilingly toward me. Big corporations, evidently, had learned to take competition with a smile! I paid her humbly for the envelope, addressed it exactly as I had the other, and took this one over to the mail box where I mailed it.
But I had hardy turned from the box, than a young girl, about 18, came up to me. She had on a red traveling coat and carried a small bag. A pretty kid, she was. And in her hand was a yellow paperbound book! I stared at her helplessly. And she spoke.
“Oh Mr. Lucas,” she begged, “pardon me please, Mr. Lucas—but will you autograph my copy of your book? I—I think it's a scream.”
“You do? But—but what made you—”
“Know you were Mr. Lucas? Oh, Mr. Lucas, I'm so ashamed! But when you were asking the rate on your wire a minute ago, I was back of you reading a wire of my own that I'd just written out. And then you laid your wire to your publisher down and turned to come over to this mailbox for some reason. And I stepped forward to get the rate on my wire—and—anyway, I couldn't help but read yours, lying there.” She held out her book. And uncapped a dainty fountain pen. “Please autograph it, Mr. Lucas?”
I stared at her a moment.
“Come over this way, youngster,” I told her.
She followed me over to a convenient point out of the stream of people who approached the mailbox every few seconds.
“My dear,” I told her, “I don't want to trick you. By giving you a fake autograph, you know?—to show your friends—and then some day you'll be made a fool of. I'm not Caspar Lucas. My name is Ed Reynolds. Once of Chicago here—but just now of New York.”
“But—but Mr. Lucas—”
“Yes, I know. My words don't sound very convincing, do they, in the face of that telegram I laid down? But I'm going to be honest with you. And explain the matter so you will be convinced. You see, I sell electric typewriters—for the Monarch Electric Machine Company of 314 Broadway, New York City. And Ed Reynolds is my name. And I merely met Mr. Lucas last night while calling on a professor of osteology here in my own home town. Calling on the professor, in short, to determine the approximate age of a human skull that I had.” I tapped the bundle under my arm. “This is the skull, moreover. But I'm not going to regale you with all the facts of that matter. The main thing, child, is to tell you that Mr. Lucas was taken very ill with ptomaine poisoning. And had to go to bed in his host's house. And the professor—the host himself—was a cripple. So Mr. Lucas asked me to mail in to his publishers a certain change for some forthcoming book of his—the copy for which change he gave me; and to wire them—yes, he told me just what I was to wire—sometime before tonight. Which I've just done. Only that I've used the airmail—which will get to New York long before tonight. And Mr. Lucas can have back his $1.50 which he entrusted to me for the wire. And I, maybe, will get an order from Mr. Lucas for an electric typewriter—so at least I hope! And this is the whole story. And won't you believe me, please?”
The kid was frightfully disappointed all right. Almost ready to cry. I put my hand on her arm. “I could have fooled you,” I told her, “but what on earth good would Caspar Lucas' name, written by just Ed Reynolds, a typewriter salesman, do you—when someday—you came across somebody who knew Caspar Lucas' signature? Wouldn't that make an awful fool of you?”
“Yes, Mr. Reynolds,” she said. And put her copy of On a Slow Plane away in the pocket of her traveling coat. “You are right! And I thank you—for being honest about it.”
“Don't mention it, my dear,” I assured her. “And good luck!”
And we both turned in opposite directions, she still obviously disappointed, but myself feeling rather decent—after the shock of what I had just caused to happen at the home of T. Parker Yocum. And I proceeded over to one of the writing counters. Where—supplied gratis to travelers—I found a generous supply of stationery printed at the top “Central Passenger Station, Chicago,” as well as a sunken inkwell actually filled with ink, and 4 old-fashioned pens, the very first one of which, I found out, wrote—and wrote smoothly!
And for 15 minutes I wrote steadily. Till I had covered 4 of the large sheets. After which I blotted my last page, and read, from beginning to end, my letter. For letter though it be, it was at the same time my confidential and signed report on all that had happened this morning—to the one person whom, in a sense, those happenings concerned the most: that dear girl-woman clad in the garb of a Holy Order, whom I could never, never possess. And as I came to the end of my letter—to the very secret signature I had appended—I shook my head ironically at the realization that to her only, of all the people in the world, could I safely send that signature, knowing that she alone was cognizant of all the reasons back of my being able to do so, and also that letter and signature both would be destroyed one minute after they had been read!
Most Gentle and Dear Ecclesiastical Lady
(With the Big Grey Eyes):
I write you this letter in the waiting room of the Central Passenger Station in Chicago. And I believe that by noontime—since I will be mailing it here before 9 o'clock—it will be at Garr Corners. Which will ensure its going out, therefore, at 2 o'clock with old Grandfather Peddy, Supreme Manager of R. F. D. No. 3, and its being dropped, by 3:30, into the box of that charming and isolated little Convent-Hospice which took such good care of me through that fever—and in which your gentle ministrations attended me for full two weeks further after I consider I was recovered.
And now, Mother Agatha, I wish to report to you all that occurred after I put Sister Flora on the train for Milwaukee last night at 9:30 and wired the Sacred Heart Sanitarium there to meet her.
The first thing I did, naturally, was to begin worrying about you—the sole and only member of that lonely little convent building. Then I realized that no man lives who would harm a member of a Holy Order. And I ceased my worrying. Then I thought, naturally, of my papers left with you, in your quaint little wooden strongbox, and inadvertently overlooked by me when I departed. And realized that, reposing with you, they were safe from the eyes of all the world. And so ceased my worrying altogether.
By this time I was on my way to Professor Endry's, on West Jackson Boulevard, with the skull. I was tempted to run in on the people who today are the foster-parents of that little Gwennie Briggs—the quaint little girl to whom I think I told you I used to bring a few cheap toys and foolish gimcracks in the long ago. Since the foster-parents live on West Jackson Boulevard, too—not so far from Professor Endry's. But the hour was late—and, besides, I felt that the child would best forget now all her brief existence as an orphan, and in particular her institutional life. So I dropped the idea, and went straight to Professor Endry's. (Incidentally, I met, at Professor Endry's a famous “author”—one, Caspar Lucas—though I fear he is what is know as a 1-book man—and destined to be forgotten.) Professor Endry, himself, let me say, was a fine and kindly man, locked to a wheelchair for life. I did not, you may be sure, give him my right name—nor did I give him the “history”—as you have it—of the skull. At any rate, jumping over some unimportant matters concerning a sudden illness of Mr. Lucas, and a small favor I agreed to do for him today—and which I did do—Professor Endry gave the skull a complete examination—microscopically, included, at least as to some shavings from it—and he measured it with queer-looking calipers in many directions. At the end of his examination, he pronounced it to be the Skull of a female—moreover, of a Mongolian female!—and, as a skull, to be not over 35 years of age. In fact, he showed me in 2 score ways—showed me the scientific textbook references to the tests thereof—why its age, as a skull, cannot even approach 50; and why it is both Mongolian and female. So you were quite right, then, in suspecting that perhaps Mr. Fulton Sinclair, the generous founder of your order, had been bilked by whoever in the East had sold him that skull as that of “Horostes, a Greek traveller who saw our Savior crucified.” Those Eastern cheats who sell those things for fabulous prices to rich Americans invariably have fake documents and fake data by which to “prove” their genuineness. And as for myself, Mother Agatha, I feel more than justified now, in the face of his verdict, in having told you of my having read at some past time about Professor Endry of Chicago—and that he was the greatest osteologist living today.
And now, Agatha, I am going to ask you not to be too much shocked. (Not that I call you, for the first and only time, “Agatha” instead of “Mother Agatha,” for that is exactly what I am going to take the liberty of doing—in this highly confidential letter which I know will be destroyed by you the moment read.) But for another reason. You are 29 years of age, Agatha—doubtlessly the youngest Mother Superior in the world—but you have not had a great deal of contact with the world, considering your six years or so of convent life, here and back in St. Louis—and what I have to tell you may jar you considerably.
Agatha—Dr. MacPherson has killed himself!
Not for any reasons, either, which will be hypothesized or given in the newspaper stories—and none of which, anyway, will you see, due to the odd conditions of the little order of which you are today the head.
He killed himself, Agatha, because his black cowardly soul showed him that he had reached the end of things: and that bit of information which Effie dropped in one of those letters which I had the privilege of reading, namely, how he kept a revolver always on or near him—and that he always said he would kill himself before he would ever serve even 5 years in jail—well, it wasn't bluster on his part, nor the exaggerated hypothesis of a little girl from the country. It was, alas, too true.
Agatha, I carried through completely the curious little plan which I outlined to you. A plan which I realize seemed frightfully fantastic, especially to you, a cloistered sister, but which did not seem so to me—for a specialist such as he was, I realized, would have but one type of drill—and one only—amongst his instruments, that being his Cowper combined burr and bone-threader, the description of which we read in the old medical book at the convent. Again, we had that letter of Effie's in which she dilated on the dusty and dilapidated condition in which the doctor allowed his chisels and his drill to lie. Her use of the singular there, with respect to the word “drill,” was too indicative of his having but one drill. And so, as I started to say above, I carried out my plan, namely, to have him do a Cowper operation on a skull (and since your “sacred” skull, Agatha, had proved 100-per cent spurious as a religious relic, and you had told me in that event you didn't want it again, I simply utilized “Mr. Horostes' ” skull instead of purchasing one) and then to see whether, by a talk to MacPherson on the phone of “bone threads” and “thread stigmata” he would offer to buy back the skull for a few hundred dollars—that is if, as “Phil Kirby, Criminological Investigator,” I should return to his office. And then I would know—and you would know, too—for all time to come, the real explanation of his premature and also erroneous use of the name “Steenhammer” as applied to the Trell Yocum murder of years ago—committed, fortunately for our mutual discussion of my plan, when you were in a convent where you were permitted to read newspapers. The explanation being, in that event, that he was the one who did that drilling into a human brain—that he was one of the 42 doctors involved with Steenhammer in the matter of that narcotic selling—and that he drilled into that brain because he believed that it belonged to Louis Steenhammer, the former owner of the house.
Incidentally, Agatha, my beautifully fabricated reference to specks of a Chinaman's “alveolar dust” being found in “Trell Yocum's” skull seemed to jar him a little bit—but didn't quite dislocate his composure. I half think he knew that there is nothing whatsoever to that matter of the cells of the alveolar process of a Chinaman having some particularly distinctive shape; though, whether he did or not, he knew plainly that such “specks” as I'd described could not serve even to have him arrested.
But as for the bone-threads and thread-stigmata—and the cunning elements which pointed to his possibly having gone there to Harlem Heights to murder Steenhammer—well, Agatha maybe I laid it all on too thick—maybe the points meshed too perfectly—maybe I just gave him too long to think—or maybe I just didn't put the proposition to him quickly enough about the few hundred dollars—but I heard a shot. I called up again. And found that he had blown his brains out.
Now don't let it worry you, Agatha. You had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Nor even I, so far as that goes. He was a blackhearted wretch—and, as is now evident, let a man go to the electric chair for himself. He's merely been his own legal executioner—and his false promises to Effie—for, Agatha, he inadvertently admitted to me that he had an insane wife living at the time he promised Effie marriage—his causing her to die from malnutrition, are automatically avenged.
To you belongs the credit of seeing that his use of the word Steenhammer, before that body was identified, was a false note which had a strange sinister explanation of some sort back of it. And to me, perhaps, the idea—from the picture that Effie unconsciously built up of him in her many letters, as the stingiest man ever born—the idea that he would never throw away a good surgical drilling tool merely because he'd murdered a man with it. Which appears exactly to have been the case! And the circumstance that he naively disclosed to me the fact that his Cowper drill had been specially made by an old professor of his—an ex-machinist—helped me tremendously by making it certain that its thread would not tally with that of the thread on any regulation Cowper drill. Of course, Agatha, as I tried to make clear to you, the years in the ground of “Trell Yocum's” body have eaten away the fine threads from that drill murder. And quite nothing could in actuality be proved from it today.
And now, Agatha, I come to further serious things. Things which, naturally, never occurred to you while we were discussing there in the convent the tenuous possibility that perhaps Doctor MacPherson, for some strange reason, had had a hand in the “Trell Yocum Murder.”
But which, you may be sure, occurred to me—though only, I'll admit, after I left the convent. Though, also, they could have remained but the wildest conjectures, forever, had MacPherson acted as an innocent man—and proved completely that our suspicions about him were hopelessly unfounded.
But I will explain.
T. Parker Yocum, Agatha, as you know, had all the reason in the world to identify that corpse as his cousin. 6000 pounds sterling worth of reason! Nor it didn't matter how different they looked—as far as T. Parker went. No one, it seems, could gainsay his identification.
But—here is the rub! Doctor MacPherson, letting himself quietly in that house around midnight with some secret key whose location Steenhammer evidently entrusted to many of the medical men who aided him in his illicit narcotic game, didn't just go drilling into the back of a man's head—that is, of course, after sneaking upon the napping individual, and clapping chloroform on the latter's face—without at least checking up. That is, MacPherson would have rolled the unconscious man over—if only to lift up the latter's eyelids, and see if he was under the influence of the chloroform—so that, you see, the proposed victim wouldn't screech when the drill went in, or groan. MacPherson would have had not less than one of the bulbs of the two-bulb lamp at least, to do this much by.
And so, Agatha, the fact remains—as I saw it conclusively the minute the Doctor killed himself, and confirmed himself as the murderer of one Steenhammer—and not of one Yocum—is that the man he killed tremendously resembled Louis Steenhammer. Rather, let me say, Steenhammer minus the pince-nez which it seems Steenhammer always affected. And with his small mustache shaved off. At least, the absence of pince-nez and mustache on the chloroformed victim accounted to Doctor MacPherson for such difference as existed between his proposed victim and Steenhammer—that, plus the drawn face from the chloroform.
But, Agatha, after leaving Professor Endry's last night, and before making a business call of my own, I went up into the Chicago Sun offices. The back files are open to inspection all night. And I got out the volume containing the story of that Trell Yocum murder—and the follow-ups. Chicago papers, of course, played it up more than any other city, and a back file of a Chicago paper was, at least so far as pictures went, worth a dozen back files of the papers of any other city. Well, there was a big pictorial layout in one issue. It contained the picture of Louis Steenhammer, former owner of the bungalow—the living-room where the murder took place—the cross showing where the body was found—lying on the couch—all the usual things. Everything except a picture of Trell Yocum! But, stamped in red ink on the bottom of the news-story were the words: “See also Sunday feature re-hash of” filled in neatly by hand, and in black ink, with the words: “October 18,” and a year date just 2 years later. (It seems they keep their records, that Sun, as records should be kept!) So I got out that volume, of course. And there, two years later, Agatha, I found a feature resume of the now old case—but with a picture of Trell Yocum in the layout! It looked exactly like the reproduction of a halftone reproduction, and it had evidently been dug up by the feature writer from some old Australian published copy of “Melbourne Blues,” on the cover of which Yocum's picture had been run; for under it were the words in tiny type: “Copyrighted by Mason and Mason, Music Publishers of Melbourne.”
And here now is the point, Agatha, of my long peroration: Never, in a thousand years, with or without mustache or glasses, either or both, could Trell Yocum be mistaken for Louis Steenhammer! Why, they weren't even the same type. Trell Yocum, to tell you the truth, looks far, far more like me.
And yet, Doctor MacPherson, after examining that face hastily after chloroforming its owner into unconsciousness, still went ahead and drilled into the brain of the wrong man!
Don't you see, Agatha, the big question it raises?—or rather raised? Especially in the face of that pictorial layout which I viewed last night? The question is: Who was the man who looked exceedingly like Louis Steenhammer—enough so that, after being chloroformed, he got his brain drilled into that night?
I pondered deeply on that after stepping out of the telephone booth after learning that MacPherson had killed himself. And my only inference, Agatha, was that that victim must have been an intruder. Not a visitor, no. For Trell Yocum had been so long out of America that it appeared he no longer had friends here. This chap, I figured, must have been a burglar or sneakthief. Must have gotten in—while Trell Yocum was napping. The chap's heart must have been bad—fatally so. Yocum must have sat suddenly up on the couch. The fellow collapsed. In a dead faint. Or, more likely, dropped dead. I don't know which. Nobody ever will.
Yocum turned on an extra bulb or so in the lamp. Put this fellow atop the couch. The latter's face probably rolling towards the wall Yocum was about to phone the police.But he went out on the veranda first—probably to see if somebody else was lurking about that house. A brave chap, as I take it. And the fact that he never re-appeared in the picture—well—I believe he got smashed across the head by a look-out accomplice of the burglar—who then fled in a panic. And Trell Yocum? He evidently wandered away. Boarded a freight train, probably, on the line that is supposed to pass somewhere near Harlem Heights. His wits gone. An amnesiac.
There are thousands of such today, Agatha, throughout the world. Trell Yocum may be pecking away on a piano today—in some cheap beer tavern—under the name John Jones—married—and with children—not even dreaming that he wrote “Melbourne Blues.”
This, at least, was my guess, Agatha. For there was no other guess possible, don't you see? And so—I decided to try and force an inkling of the truth from T. Parker Yocum. The same way I'd tried to force it from Doctor MacPherson. In short, I became that hypothetical sneak-thief buddy. And, Agatha, I was pretty tough. Meaning “hard”!
I caught him when he was examining some hydrocyanic acid. Maybe I was too hard. Maybe fate made me catch him at the wrong moment—that is, for him. But when he realized what he was up against, for having falsely identified a body which caused an innocent man to be executed—well, Agatha, he downed that prussic acid. And when I called back a few minutes later on another phone—he was dead. As dead as Doctor MacPherson!
So he's confessed his guilt, Agatha—to you and me only, of all the world—to not less, at least, than swindling someone out of 6,000 pounds sterling, whether that someone be Trell Yocum himself, or whether it be the 3 bachelor friends of Yocum's in Melbourne who, under a 7 years disappearance of Trell Yocum, could have inherited his estate; and, at most, of letting a man be unjustly electrocuted. And he's gone, so I think, where he richly deserves to be. A cad and a rotter and worse—to have done the latter thing he did.
And now, Agatha, this lies all on my shoulders. And don't you let it worry you a second! All you expected, at the very most, was that Doctor MacPherson might try and buy back our skull—and then we'd know something which might explain that Steenhammer business. But, as things have come out, more has happened—and Effie's death has become actually avenged. Avenged, moreover, without the use of police officers, notoriety, anything. Poor consolation, to be sure, and I don't mean it even to seem as such; And as for T. Parker Yocum's death—which is likewise a sort of avengement of Sam Jafferson—well, his death is just a sort of byproduct out of the whole strange murder mixup.
It's all closed now. And only you and I, in the entire world, know the story back of it all. For there's nothing to be gained by ever letting it go out to the world. Since it won't help Sam Jafferson now, poor devil. And my narrative would probably be looked upon by police and newspapers as sheer hokum.
And now I shall close. For I have grave business before me today. Business involving a huge sum of money. With the final net results being a matter, one might say, of Maybe! I don't myself know the answer yet. Indeed, the answer is undecided enough that, should I see a nickel lying on the sidewalk, I would avidly pick it up—as characterizes “rich men” like myself! And since this is the only letter I shall ever write to you, Agatha, I am going to tell you something that you have doubtless guessed. It is, Agatha, that I love you dearly. But, of course, I know that our paths for the future lie millions of miles apart. You a woman of Holy Orders—with your heart in your work. So—I understand. And I shall never say more about it—for I shall return, of course, with the skull. After I have settled my own queer business. Perhaps I am returning with that skull, worthless as it now is, merely as an excuse for seeing you again—who knows?
In the meantime—luck to Agatha—my thanks to her for preserving the secrets I have confided in her—and much love.
McAllister Y. Thane.
THE END
(Publisher's Note: A sequel to this novel will be published shortly.)