Finger finger, p.21
Finger, Finger!, page 21
I thought I would feel him out. Perhaps I was rash in so doing.
“This belonged to an old blind man, with a head as smooth as a billiard ball. Funny looking tragic sight he was.”
“He must have been,” my visitor commented. “I know a man like that myself. He lives in Capetown, South Africa, today. His blindness makes him tragic, but his shiny head gives the lie to the tragedy. However, I shouldn’t talk. I’m getting a bit thin on top myself. What other curios have you?”
And so, seeing that I had stumbled upon one of his complexes, I knew I had a subject that would not only interest him, but could be strung out and out and even further out till O’Rourke and his friend Camera-Eye should reach Oak Street. The South Sea Island arrow might interest him. But on the other hand—
“I’ve a South Sea Island curio,” I told him, “in my chiffonier drawer over yonder, that I prize highly; but since you’ve been in Australia you’ve probably hobnobbed yourself with every South Sea Island chieftain there is. And—”
“Quite on the contrary,” he made haste to explain. “When I both went to Australia, and came from there, it was directly from Capetown—and back to Capetown again. I have never been in the actual South Sea Islands.”
“Well then, I’ll be glad to show it to you,” I said. “Just a little something that proves that the South Sea Islander is more exact—than the Irishman. That is, when it comes to weapons. For he dips the point of his in the juice of a poisoned berry.
The Irishman’s victims get up again, but the Islander’s stay put.”
I clumped across the room to my chiffonier. I drew out the top drawer and commenced fumbling among the contents. Presently my fingers came in contact with the slim polished feathered object for which I was searching; so I looked up. On the top of the chiffonier was my alarm clock, and it was turned exactly halfway about, so that its face would ever confront my bed, and what I saw reflected in the curved nickeled side surface of that article was more than enough to cause me to gasp, audibly.
For the man with the grey beard had crept catlike across the floor, while my back was turned. He now stood directly behind me, raising the heavy shillalah high in the air. He seemed, in the curved metal side of the alarm clock, like a sort of benign ministerial pinhead with huge belly, mounted on a pair of shriveled short legs, waving a gentle shillalian benediction over me.
It took me three seconds perhaps to realize that I was not in the Hall of Laughter at Riverview Park. That this was real. And no benediction. Then, automatically, I wheeled sharply, at the same time thrusting one arm instinctively over my head to ward off the blow—or benediction, or whatever it was. I was even yet not sure about that feature.
But too late.
Crack!
Even today, when I look back upon that affair, I can hear it—actually hear the meeting between that short oak cudgel and my cranium—but the remembrance lasts for only the barest fraction of a second. With an overwhelming feeling of diffused pain and a sensation like that caused by a million blazing lights, darkness—black, utter, impalpable—closed in on me, and shut out all my knowledge of things external.
CHAPTER XVII
And Then Came O’Rourke
How long I lay unconscious I do not know; it could not have been over eight or nine minutes, I imagine. When I did finally open my eyes, I found myself peering into a gigantic face at least 6 feet high, with a close-cropped red mustache several yards wide, acres and acres of sandy hair atop the face, and two stupendous steel-grey eyes, each as large precisely as a pint flask of the old-time bathtub gin. (Take that, Terry! I told you I’d describe you, exactly as you were when you entered this story. And I have!) After blinking a few times, I found that the face wasn’t quite so large as all this: it was simply bending over me, peering into mine, that was all, and belonged to a tall gangling human figure, about 36 years old, in a pin stripe blue suit. Was in fact, that of T. O’Rourke, of the Chicago Police Department.
And blinking my way quickly back to a general recognition of things, I became conscious of several more facts now, which seemed a bit peculiar for the moment only. I was lying on my bed: a china pitcher of water was on the floor close by; my wardrobe doors were standing wide open; and across the room, some distance inside the doorway, stood Mrs. Sprudelganger, her grey hairs weighted down with that great brown straw hat, bearing its enormous flowergarden of vivid cloth flowers, that she always wore when she went downtown, in one wrinkled hand her usual package of round steak whose red coloring had already seeped through its manilla wrapping, her mouth open, her false teeth completely dropped down, and her eyes gazing at me helplessly through her silver spectacles. By her side was Belladonna, her own mouth wider open yet, and seeming like a small red cavern in a round black cave. Now I struggled to a sitting posture. I looked at that figure who stood silently watching me. Then I spoke.
“What—what happened—O’Rourke?”
“Plenty, I guess. How do you feel?”
But seeing that I was coming to, Mrs. Sprudelganger was waddling her way across the space between us.
“Ach du lieber Misder Rant,” she said, shaking her head so that all her flowers rattled, swayed as in some errant breeze, “I—I am so sorry dot you get hit bei der head. Dit dot man sdeal any money from you? I vos chust now get in—but afder it vos all ofer. Dit he—” She turned to Belladonna. “Bellydonny, mach zu dein Mund.” Belladonna closed her mouth with surprising promptitude. “Unt you get no zupper for dot you let buglers come bei dieser Haus in, unt don’t say nodding bei noputty. Vy you dittent call de bolice, eh? Vy—”
Belladonna, previously merely bewildered, was now frightened. Even I was clear enough to see that. She set up a wail. “Fo’ Gawd, Maw Sprudelganger, Ah done do jes’ whut Mist’ Rand tell me. Ah—”
“Sag es auf Deutsch,” demanded Mrs. Sprudelganger sternly. “Unt maybe I don’d vip you.”
“Ich hat—Ich hat—Ich hat do on—onlich vas Herr—Herr Rand—mir er—erz—erzh—” stammered Belladonna, her painfully acquired German quite scared out of her.
“I’ll explain matters for you, Belladonna,” I said. “Later. She’s not to blame, Mrs. S.,” I added. “O’Rourke, get these good folks out of here, will you?”
He crossed rapidly to the doorway, stepped outside, beckoned the two within out, and spoke a few words in an undertone to Mrs. Sprudelganger. She immediately departed the scene, prodding Belladonna thence by the tip of a firm forefinger against Belladonna’s wiggling spine. With O’Rourke back inside, and the door closed, I repeated my question.
“Just—just what happened, O’Rourke?”
“I think you’d better tell that. First, however, how’s your dome? Here—slap this cold towel on it. Are you in a great deal o’ pain?”
I shook my head. “Not a great deal. No. My cranium feels more numb than it hurts. Sort of as—as though I’d run squarely into a brick wall. It is beginning to ache a bit now though, at that. Sort of a dull ache. And—but say—what time is it, anyway?” And then I added, in further remembrance: “And where—where’s the fellow who landed—on me? Did Camera-Eye—by any chance—” I looked at O’Rourke with more or less inquiringness, I guess.
“Here.” O’Rourke had withdrawn from his hip pocket a silver flask with a screw-top cup. “Drink this. It was give me today by a liquor store owner. I was taking it home tonight. 20 years old, or supposed to be. That ice water the Ink Blot rushed up here brought you around pretty fine—but now you need a swig o’ firewater.”
I was already applying the cold wet towel handed me by O’Rourke, to the part of my scalp which pained me the most.
But I took the firewater. It burned its way down; then expanded outward all through my being. A warm glow pervaded me. My pain circuits were nicely cut off—for the time being—by the alcohol molecule.
“Boy—that’s fire-water all right. Bring on the whole Japanese army.” I flung back the damp forelock of hair that persisted in trying to stray across my vision.
O’Rourke regarded me gravely from the stuffed chair which he swung around so that it could face my bed.
“Well,” he remarked, “I see you’re not going to talk until I do. So here it is—what there is of it. I was delayed in getting away. First by phoning all over the Detective Bureau for Camera-Eye, and then all over the Loop. I guess I got connected all over Chicago, hanging in mid-air for about five minutes at every connection. When I did get a line on him finally, I found he was clear out on the other side o’ South Chicago, camera-eying somebody for somebody else higher up in the Bureau. So I just decided to come on without him. If I couldn’t get Kennedy himself to eye this bird, I didn’t want none of the other punks and bluffers at the Bureau. They’re nothing but stallers—but Kennedy has the goods. Twenty thousand faces he’s got locked in that remarkable brain of his. He—but never mind. We didn’t get him—so no use of going into all that. Enough to say that I just decided to play solo, stick my old flint-lock on Greybeard in here, lay the cuffs on him, rush him down to the Bureau and let the boys pummel out of him what he’s pulling off here. And been pulling off in New York as well.
“Well,” O’Rourke continued, “I was about ready to shove off at last, when Hideo Nakamura, a well-known depot sneakthief here in Chicago, and a supposed Jap secret agent, too—oh, he’s always denied being a secret agent, of course, but he is, undoubtedly—was brought in to me. Funny young-old pock-marked duffer, with a game peg—lame, see? He’d been chugging back and forth across the Loop as big as life, in an ancient Ford car he happens to own—a car that looks like an exhibit in the Transportation Museum—and every traffic copper in the Loop phoned in to the Bureau that Hideo—for some damn fool reason—had popped up, and was out in full force. You see Hideo’s in a position to give us a certain affidavit we need in the Bailey murder case, coming up for trial next month. And I won’t try to go into the further details of that right now. But since I’m now First A. C. man—I had to take him on. I—still, you don’t know nothing about my new job, do you? First Alibi Checker! Let it pass for th’ present. Enough to say that I lost another ten minutes telling Hideo exactly what we needed of him in the Bailey Case—and gettin’ cold water thrun on me by Hideo—and gettin’ him out of there. And fin’lly I routed up my Cadillac, and got here to Number 72.
“That was fully fifteen minutes ago,” O’Rourke pressed on. He looked at his wrist watch. “For it’s 10 after 5 now. And you was laying like a log for at least 7 minutes after I got in this room. Yes.” He withdrew his gaze from his watch. “Well, I rang the bell. The Ink Blot answered the door. And knowed me, of course. I just took a chance and asked her whether you had any visitors with you upstairs. Particularly one with a beard. She said no, but that you just had had, one man, a man with a grey beard, yes—that he’d rang the bell and asked whether somebody lived here who’d just come in from New York City, and she told him yes and sent him up to your room. But, Rand, the fellow had already gone, she said. She was sweepin’ when he went out. He seemed kind o’ excited. Told her that you wanted her to come up in five minutes sure, to mail a letter for you. Well, believe me, I smelled somethin’ wrong. I come on up them stairs three at a time. And opened the door of th’ room here and stepped inside. And there you was, stretched out in front of the chiffonier, that shillalah of yours on the floor. I took one quick glance around—and th’ wardrobe doors, both of ’em, was flung wide open. There was one raincoat in sight, laying across the arm of this here very chair.
“After feelin’ you over, I lifted you up and took you over and put you down on the bed here. Then I yelled for Ink Blot to come up with a pitcher o’ water with a hunk o’ ice in it. I was already friskin’ that one raincoat that was in sight. But not a thing in any pocket. So it’s the one he brung with him, naturally.” I nodded. “Ink Blot come up, ice clankin’ in the pitcher like a ghost in an old castle. But she stayed only long enough to rush down and tell Mrs. S. all about it—for Mrs. S. was just comin’ in then. Long before Mrs. S. had puffed her way upstairs, I was slapping this ice-cold towel on your bean and your face, and you was snatchin’ for breath ever’time I laid it on you—and coming back in fine shape. Well, that’s all. It’s nothing more than a case o’ bein’ knocked out, I guess. That’s not serious—not in my game, anyway. Glad it ain’t worse.”
“Hand me that raincoat, O’Rourke,” was all I said. He did so. I went straight to the inner pocket. But there was nothing whatever in it. In fact, the garment was manifestly the one the bearded man had brought with him. That was plain. My original one. The one I’d bought across from the Grand Central Depot in New York. In fact, the top button was missing, and I had jerked that top button off myself in the slats of the Fifth Avenue bus seat in New York. I handed it back to O’Rourke.
“He got his goods all right, O’Rourke. His raincoat—the one that was in the wardrobe there. All nicely stuffed, and ready, and waiting for him. He probably ran his fingers over the section where the buttonholes are double-backed with cloth, to make sure his purse was there, or more likely he actually went in the pocket and made good and certain. And once sure, cleared out in a hurry.”
“Well damn it all, what happened?” O’Rourke asked. “Was he suspicious of you? Did you have a rumpus? I note one o’ your shoes is off, too. What the—”
I waved a hand to stop the flow of questions. “Hand me one-half a nip of that whiskey, will you?” I asked him.
He gave it to me. More than a half.
I felt pretty good now. I sat up on the bed, against the cool brass headpiece. And I told him all about everything. And I added, reluctantly, too, at the end: “But give the confounded blighter his due, O’Rourke. If he told Belladonna to come up here in five minutes, that certainly means he only wanted to knock me out, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes, it looks as though he only wanted to hand you the count so that he could collect his ghastly relics—one of ’em’s all o’ that, anyway—and blow. Of course, infant, he knew you was stalling—the minute he found that that tip of cloth was the corner of a Dryo raincoat. He prob’ly feared in the very beginnin’ that you might be stalling him, for you bucked him too much in everything he suggested. But when he shoved that ear o’ green cloth down with his foot, and knew how the land lay—he was certain. And if you was stalling, naturally, you was just stalling till somebody—prob’ly a detective like me’self, or a neighborhood station copper—could get over here. So he just made the only play he could to get out with his skin—and his junk besides.”
I scratched my head and uttered an “ouch.” For the scalp in front pulled on that bruised place in back. “But what in seven heavens does he want with that finger, do you suppose? And the ring? No, the ring part’s clear now—he wants to read the inscription—he’s got his specs now. And when he does read it—what then? Somehow, old top, I imagine he’s due for a jolt when he finds it’s in Egyptian. He’ll have to do something like I did—consult somebody who knows.”
“Yeah?” said O’Rourke reprovingly. “Well pry loose of a little info yourself. You ain’t said a word yet what your professor friend with the drums and the peepyrus said—about that ring.”
I rose from the bed, and hobbled over to the chiffonier. That is, I started to hobble, but found that that great law of physiology was at work. That Mother Nature can’t be temperamental in two spots at once! For my ankle was all to the good. Or practically so. That rap on the head had drawn my disabilities elsewhere. Or possibly the pail of hot water had had some effect. Well, anyway—
Under the Abendpost in the third drawer I found the scrap of paper I had copied from the ring. I brought it back and handed it to O’Rourke. And sat down again. Leaned against the headrest of the bed, in fact.
He gazed at me blankly and sourly.
“Jeeminy Crackey! But that’s Aigyptian all right. All except them x’s and y’s and figgers. I know blame well they ain’t Aigyptian.” He looked up, bewilderedly. “Say—are you ever going to spill it? The Prof—what did he say it read?”
I repeated the translation word for word. It was more or less burned on my mind by this time. O’Rourke stared at me helplessly. And began repeating it himself.
“Seek ye th’ hairless man what hasn’t any eyes; narrate to him x plus 2, y minus 3; laugh greatly toward—”
“Listen, old war horse,” I told him. “Just file it away in your bean in simple language. Thus: ‘Find the blind, baldheaded man; tell him x plus 2, y minus 3; give him the merry ha-ha!’ And,” I added, “I may mention that I felt this fellow—Greybeard—out. About such a man, that is. And he knows one such—in Cape Town, South Africa.”
“Stew much for me!” groaned O’Rourke, and he was now patently, for the first time, immersed in the deepest of melancholies. “Me,” he went on dolorously, “who goes plumb nuts whenever anybody hands me a riddle like ‘What’s the diffrence between a striped female cat and a banana?’—and don’t give me the answer. Me—what worried 11 years about that one conundrum alone, till I got the answer. Me, who—oh well, what’s the use! Here’s one parlor riddle you and me’ll never know the answer to now. And one case that ain’t ever even going to reach the departmental files.”
To which statements I nodded sadly, my own curiosity was likewise badly titillated—and worse—frustrated.
But on each of those points just sadly enunciated by O’Rourke, we were quite mistaken, both of us.
CHAPTER XVIII
Concerning One, Hideo!
A deep silence now fell upon us both. It was the silence of defeat. Of self-recrimination. The silence of one who, as I well knew, had an aching bump of inquisitiveness. And the silence of one other whose entire cranium, back of that mist of alcohol soaring through his blood, also ached, more or less.
