Sebastien Zing pricked up the ears which were affixed to the head protruding from the warm bag.

  Chicago news!

  “It is, my international friends,” the announcer went on, “that the strange hatchet murder, six weeks ago, of that American—J. Kenwood—who published that equally strange quack magazine, has at last been solved. Through the capture of his murderer due to a slip made by the latter—and the murderer’s confession, rendered in full but 30 minutes ago. He was captured, it seems, in Chicago—that undoubted home of drama and melodrama!—through having been held up in the Negro section—and because of having notified the police immediately by phone that he had been held up! And because of the fact that his despoiler was thereby instantly picked up by what is known, over there, as a ‘squad car’—some sort of roving car, don’t you know, which travels bad districts with police in it, and is in continual touch with its headquarters by short-wave radio. Anyway, upon this black holdup man’s person was found about 3 pounds in American currency and a beautiful dappled fountain pen, which was ascertained by the Chicago police to have obliterated lettering engraved on its gold band, reading ‘Jack Kenwood’. It—”

  The speaker paused.

  While Sebastien Zing caught his breath.

  “My God!” he said. “Dappled fountain pen—what—Chicag—what—”

  But the announcer with the British intonations and the American phraseology was again speaking.

  “He claimed, did this black holdup man, that he had found both pen and money upon a sidewalk, bound together by a rubber band, where the packet had been dropped by the man who subsequently claimed to have been held up and who, he said, had been walking ahead of him. The police were not, however, interested in this childish and naive Senegambian-like argument, nearly so much as they were as to how the man who was held up got the pen. The latter’s explanation, when he called at the Detective Bureau headquarters for his posses­sions, failed utterly both as to where he had bought the pen second-hand—for that place, it seems, had gone out of business before the murder of this J. Kenwood—and with whom he had been that night of the J. Kenwood murder—for that man, a bridge instructor, and famous expert, was dead on the day before the J. Kenwood murder. And so Kenwood’s murderer confessed all.

  “His confession was that he went up there that night to the Interstate Life Building, garbed as a North American Indian chief, intending to go to the room across the hall from J. Kenwood, and—”

  “Thank—God!” said Sebastien Zing. “One—one of Hippolytus’ nut clients.”

  “—but went into J. Kenwood’s office, which was lighted up, instead. He himself was in the Indian suit, he claims, so that he could go over to the Negro district to complete some business transaction. And thus openly, and legally, carry an axe for protection. It being, you will all remember, that quaint American holiday known as Hall-of-the-Eeen. He entered J. Kenwood’s lighted once, wanting to find out from J. Kenwood if he could rent the latter’s office, then or later. For he had discovered that his own name, and J. Kenwood’s room number, and the street where the building stood, and the building number itself, all numeralized into a magic number that spelled huge success could he knit them all together by occupancy thereof. But he found, of course—as all you who read the fine journalistic pages of the International News here, and who remember that bizarre case, and the 10-year lease that lay on J. Kenwood’s desk—that J. Kenwood had leased the place for 10 years the day before. And, in desperation—not knowing any other way to obtain the office which filled out for him only, the exceedingly lucky combination—he killed J. Kenwood. Only to see, the next day, the building manager change all the numbers in that corridor, and exclude the fatal—though for him, the murderer, lucky—number.

  “His profession,” the announcer went on, “before I put you back onto some music—for Miss O’Hearn is only just now putting on the first of her tap shoes—was, as will be sur­mised, that of Numerologist. A Numerologist, in fact, whose office was directly across the hall from that of J. Ken­wood. And his name was Hippolytus Zing. And—oh all right, Scotty —give us the music, then, for Miss O’Hearn’s entrance.”

  And the music from the Royal Scots Band soared forth.

  “My—God!” said the man in the sheepskin bag, reaching forth one arm and turning off the radio. “He—he—he did it! He—did it! Whew! Well I only hope he didn’t make a mistake on his dates—and that the killing didn’t take place on a night when he had no class or anything. For he could be hung—yes!—under those new speedy Illinois execution laws—before I’d even get in touch with civilization again. My God, yes—here’s hoping.”

  And he reached forth an arm to his radio and turned it back onto the music from the Chung Sung Luncheon Club, Shanghai. For it was cold, and very cheerless, there on Pass 171.

  CHAPTER XVII

  In Which D. Rand Visits T. O’Rourke On a Wintry Day

  Sealskin cap deep down over ears, gloved hands sunk far within the warm pockets of his great winter coat, David Rand surveyed curiously the old-fashioned 4-story apartment building on South Ashland Boulevard where Terry O’Rourke now lived. Its grey Bedford-stone arched doorway, and white marble vestibule, including white marble steps leading up to and into its front hall, were decidedly not the architecture of those ultra-modern structures that were rapidly filling Chicago; but it was well kept up, and had a certain dignity about it. Its transom glistened; every square inch of its white marble was spotless. The mailboxes, though old-fashioned, and accessible to every thief who might wish to insert his fingers, were polished to a high brassy radiance.

  Snow, in great heavy flakes, had been falling all day, this day of February 7th, and the leafless trees on either side of Ashland Boulevard seemed cotton-encrusted. An occasional automobile plowed its way along the wide boulevard, and far down the street an actual sleigh came sliding along, its bells tinkling gaily, steam coming from the nostrils of the prancing black horse which drew it.

  What, David Rand wondered, did Terry O’Rourke want of him—that he should ask him to call there at 3 o’clock sharp, on the afternoon of February 7th—and without fail?

  He turned into the vestibule, and pressed the button of that second right-hand mailbox which bore the name of T. O’Rourke. And then, peeling off his fur-lined gloves as he walked, proceeded up the carpeted inside stairs that wound their way past walls covered with old-fashioned lincrus­tawalton.

  Terry O’Rourke greeted him in the doorway at the 2nd floor.

  “Glad you got here first,” he said. “Thought at first you might be one of the two other chaps I invited also. We’re all going to hold confab. But that won’t prevent you an’ me from chewing the fat a bit first.” He stood aside. “Enter my bachelor diggin’s.”

  David Rand entered the apartment. It was pleasantly warm; and he heard a radiator sizzing somewhere. He hung his coat and sealskin cap on a mission hatrack that confronted him in a tiny hall.

  “In this way,” directed O’Rourke proudly, indicating a narrow back-parlor with ancient bead portieres cutting it partially off. “My livin’ room. I keep my parlor room for a gymnasium!”

  Still considerably puzzled, Rand entered the living room. A fine large room, but hopelessly without the touch of woman. A flamboyant rug, expensive obviously, bedizened with huge red and yellow roses, covered the floor. Two tall windows gave forth onto a vacant lot at the south of the house, and a huge rubber plant sat between them, but in such position as not to obstruct the generous light they gave. The doors to the parlor—or gymnasium, as O’Rourke had made it—were locked, and studded with photographs of everything from Hollywood screen actresses to baseball players and pugilists. Not a chair in the room matched any other chair, or anything else, in fact, much less the rug. A huge deer head hung upon one wall, with antlers spreading forth into the room, and a pair of pajamas hung on the tip of one antler. A fireplace in the wall separating the room from the dining room had been converted into a sideboard, by a set of terraced cigar-boxes covered with red 10-cent store tissue paper, and banked with wine glasses, liquer glasses, cock-tail glasses, and more glasses of every shape and tint. A row of quart and 5th-size bottles stood along the entire front of the fireplace.

  Across the room from the side-windows was apparently an alcove, or den, or smoking niche—although exactly what it was was not revealed, for two heavy black drapes occluded its doorway, operated by cord pulls running down rings on the side. The only room adjoining that was visible was a dining room, containing a built-in sideboard and a large round table, in its center a half dozen ash trays, a poker-chip box, and at least seven decks of cards.

  “Quite a place you’ve got here,” Rand offered.

  “Ain’t it!” said O’Rourke enthusiastically. “I’ll show you about later on. Including my smokin’ den over yonder there, abaft the drapes. Which are designed to sequester him what looks too long on the wine when it’s red. I call it the ‘pass-out’ room. Never a party, but some dam’ fool guzzles too much over in me fireplace bar. So I stick ’em in there—in the ‘pass-out’ room, that is—on the couch. Turn off the lights. Draw them there black drapes—and let ’em sleep it off while th’ party goes on, joy unrefined.”

  “You’re absolutely human, O’Rourke,” commented Rand wonderingly. “I thought you were a policeman. And here you like parties—good drinks—poker.”

  “An’ why not?” countered the other, a bit nettled. “Is there annything immoral about them things? Sit down.”

  Rand dropped into an occasional chair.

  “I didn’t understand your note, O’Rourke. It said positively 3 o’clock—and must be the 7th. I plowed all the way over in this snowstorm by street car and foot, to fulfill the terms. Didn’t even try to bring out my car. For the streets with street car tracks on ’em are the only ones that are being kept clear. Was it something about the manuscript I wrote up for you? Your note intimated that—”

  “Hold!” said the other. “When it comes to not understandin’ things, I don’t understand why your wife—when I just now rung you—said I might catch you at ‘your desk’ in the Amalgamated News Service. How the billy-hell—”

  “Just,” said David Rand sadly, “that Kenwood’s murder brought me—indirectly—success. In more ways than that particular one set forth in the ‘story’ you asked me to write up for your ‘grandchildren’1 For, as you’ll remember, you police found an Ultrapolitan cover in Kenwood’s drawer on which he’d lettered, in ink, ‘An Exclusive Editorial by Gilbert Melbourne’.”

  “Sure,” admitted O’Rourke. “And when th’ reporters connected with Gillie—he blew smoke out of his eyes and swore he’d never agreed to write nothing for that quack magazine, and then they—th’ reporters—contacted you, the Gin’ral Manag—”

  “Ex-G-M then,” Rand corrected the other. “For with the passing of Kenwood passed Ultrapolitan!”

  “Right! Well they contacted you—and found that ’twas to be another Gil Melbourne that was to father th’ article, and that you was to write it—had already writ it—an’—”

  “Yes, and that fellow Dog-Face, of the Chicago Tribune, swiped my article from my room—and ran it complete in a huge 2-page Sunday supplement feature story he wrote entitled ‘Quack Publishing’.”

  “And from that has come—somethin’?” queried O’Rourke helplessly.

  “More than something,” declared David Rand. “For when ‘Mal Gamate’ of the Amalgamated News Syndicate died last week—he was, you know, Frederick vanHosley, and did stuff very much like Melbourne to ape Hearst—they found nobody who could quite exactly imitate his style. And then the Old Man—I work for him now, and can call him ‘The Old Man’—reading over Dog-Face’s feature article again, read my article that had been intended to sort of—of copy Melbourne—he realized that it at least aped the dead ‘Mal Gamate’! So he called me in—had me write a half dozen sample short talks—anyway, I was hired day before yesterday—at $5000 the first year, and $10,000 the next and thereafter if I stick. And now I’m ‘Mal Gamate’—of the Amalgamated News Syndicate.”

  “Well, ’tis a swill wind,” said O’Rourke, “that blows the smell of garbage in any direction! Or, as maybe you might say it, it’s an ill wind that don’t blow nobody any bad. And it—but you were just now asking about the manuscrip you writ for me. For me grandchildher. Detailin’ the odd events that come out of Kenwood’s bumpoff. No, twasn’t about that I wanted to see you today. For your manuscrip is a crackerjack—ending included—and how!—but only so far as it goes. The longer you writ on it—the more you writ like an author. But I find now that it don’t cover the whole case. An’ me grandchildher will want to know it all, from A to Izzard. How it all really started. How it all really ended. How—”

  “Well—it seems to me that I started it correctly, anyway. First, an accidental exchange of raincoats aboard the Chicago Fly—”

  “Accidental, eh? Well, not so’s you can notice it, me boy. Nothin’ accidental about it at all!”

  “Why—what—what do you mean, O’Rourke?”

  “Well, it’s a long story. Which I got to make short. A one-time guard-guide in the Cyrus Weatherford Mooseum in New York—fellow named John Walsh—got a bit daft over some young chicken up there, commenced squiring her around—and his wiff sued him for divorce. About 10 days ago, that is. She—but say—do you know about this here 13th Coin of Confoocius!”

  “Why—sure. What I’ve read in the papers, that is. I read how China got up on her ear a couple of months ago, and kicked a number of Jap dictators out with such force that they never came down till they were volplaning over Nippon. And you told me yourself, you’ll remember on the phone, that this chap Yin Yi said in his postal to you from China that China was all agog. Then too—there was that newsstory the night Jack Kenwood was killed. In the first Midnight Brevities, you know. About the blind numismatist in New York who—”

  “Yeah. Never mind recountin’ it. That’s what I’m touchin’ on now. About John Walsh’s wife. Well, as I say, she’s suin’ him for divorce. It’ll prob’ly be patched up. Them things gen’ally are. But the things that escapes in the heat o’ emotion—stays escaped! See? An’ she went to th’ District Attorney down there—some 10 days ago, as I said—an’ spouted a lot o’ dope to him. It was her hubby, Rand, who snitched that coin. And not no mysterious German with square silver-rimmed specs an’ a high-pitched voice. Her hubby, she says, snitched it in exchange for a cancelled mortgage, of 400 bucks, on their bungalow at 142 West 123rd Street. And a wad of 50,000 bucks cash—which, however, he never got! Trouble is, Rand, after he got let out o’ th’ Museum for carelessness, he got to drinkin’. Then goin’ to night clubs. An’ met this chicken. And stuck another mortgage on his place. So’s he’d have coin to squire her around. But he’d told the wiff all the facts of the museum affair, after he’d been let out. Pretty good pals the two of ’em was, you see—at that time. And so, when the blow-up between ’em came, she spouted—with a vengeance!” O’Rourke paused. “Since which time,” he continued, “four of us—Police Assistant Cadwallader, of the District Attorney’s office in New York—Fed’ral Inspector Curtlan of New York—Assistant Fed’ral Inspector Monz at Chicago—and your humble yours truly—has been workin’ together quiet-like, all in cahoots, on this case—an’ at both ends at the same time—fillin’ in every detail that the wiff has given a lead to. An’ together we’ve just about dug up the whole darned picture.”

  “But I—I don’t see, O’Rourke, how that New York case should touch anything in your line of work—here in Chicago?”

  “No? Well when Cadwallader’s and Curtlan’s investiga­tions in New York brung out, five days ago, the startlin’ fact that on October 31st last, certain individuals here in Chi was ordered to pull off a murder—a la Chinese—same to be a delicate plant against any luckless Chink who might have the bad fortune to be entangled in any way with the victim, ’twas me who was delegated to work with ’em. For the Kenwood murder was just such a murder. And I’m still in charge of the remains of that case—such as they be! An’ I ain’t never really stopped workin’ on it, Rand, because I knew, of course, that Hess2 never done it. Even as I knew, at the very time the son-of-a-bitch confessed, that ’twasn’t old Doctor Hippopotamus Zing that—”

  “Why—” put in Rand, in surprise, “—did you know Zing didn’t do it—at the time he confessed?”

  “God—yes!” said O’Rourke. “But th’ newspaper boys had done me a big favor th’ week before, an’ I’d promised to give ’em a red hot story soon—an’ I wasn’t deliverin’ at all—had nothin’ to deliver. And whin that down-at-heel noomerologist sung like a canary—I just paid ’em back, each an’ ivery one of ’em, so damned well that I understand half of ’em succeeded in drawing a week’s pay in advance from his cashier’s office. The old codger—that Doc Zing! With 7 wimmen comin’ for’ard next day an’ sayin’ he was teachin’ em noomerology, at 10 cents apiece, the night o’ Kenwood’s murder. The old codger! Claimin’ we beat the confession out of him! That’s what gets me damned mad. I dropped in, last week, whin I was over in the Fine Arts Building, at his office, an’—”

  “Fine Arts Building?” ejaculated David Rand.

  “Right! And by God—he had a dozen wimmen—these ’uns in furs and silks—waitin’ in a grand reciption room—to be noomeralized—at, I understand it, $3 apa’ce. An’ he had a gal in a smock, keepin’ office—and whin he come out of his insulting room, the Doc was wearin’ big Oxfordian silver specs, and a long swallow-tailed English coat. My God—but that killin’ just made him—after he woke up to what he could do with it.”

 

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