The matilda hunter murde.., p.22
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 22
“Trotter,” asked Callahan irritatedly, changing the subject apparently to something which bothered him greatly, “is there any way on earth that a man could safely carry all about town a deadly contrivance like this thing, and yet set it for operation any time he wanted—without cutting the wires that sewed it up?”
“Why—of course!” laughed Trotter. “With a compass-ratchet. Picture a compass fixed inside such a thing—with a globule of mercury held in the mouth of a glass tube by molecular attraction, set at a certain point on the compass periphery, or compass face, so that every time the steel needle swung through 90 degrees it made contact once with the mercury and through its own pivot closed a delicate electric circuit which in turn operated a ratchet lock through a relay. Suppose that lock required five—or six—such successive contacts to unlock itself, and that the device would then operate itself once and once only, ten minutes—or fifteen minutes—later by a simple time clock mechanism? A man could transport it all over Chicago, being careful—say—to carry it turned north and south when he went down east and west streets, etc.; yet he could set it for operation any instant by giving it five—or six—twirls and getting out of the way. This Mrs. Hunter—or her accompanying bodyguard—could have inadvertently unlocked it by making just enough turns between 213 Locust Street and 39 Scott Street.” He paused. “Indeed, the combinations and ramifications of lockings and unlockings possible through such a compass-operated lock are so many as to permit of any possible number of logical hypotheses as to why it operated at one time and yet was a safe proposition at another.”
“By Gad, Trotter,” commented Callahan, “you’ve thrown some light on a phase of it nicely.” He lapsed into silence. Then he spoke again, his brows screwed up into a troubled frown. “We’d be making fine asses of ourselves, though, if there were no such thing as a compass lock—no such thing as a real Z-ray throwing device—only a lunatic’s dream; if all these three people—rather, two people and a dog—all died of heart disease purely by accident When they happened to be in the presence of this black satchel.” He turned to Ellwood. “Do dogs have heart disease, Ellwood?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Ellwood, And added witheringly: “We don’t insure dogs.” He melted a little in his caustic attitude. “Dogs do have lots of organic troubles and diseases that humans have got, though.”
“You’re bucking pretty tough mathematical odds though, Chief,” said Trotter calmly, “in turning the contents of that case into what you call a lunatic’s dream. Let’s suppose—in fact, let’s not just presume that three organic living entities could have had heart disease—as for instance, fibrous myocarditis—and could have gone out purely by accident while they were near a black satchel. Let’s—let’s be generous, and include such things as—say—for the two humans, anyway—embolism of the coronary artery which could itself produce almost instantaneous death; also, in the thoracic aorta, sudden death too. It doesn’t matter how many commonly medical accepted causes we include. Let’s be unduly liberal and say that chances are 1 in 300 that a person—and animal—so subject would happen to meet his death in the vicinity of this—this black harmless leather case. It’s really a longer chance—much longer. But on that basis alone, Chief, do you know what the chances would be then of all three doing likewise?”
“1 in 900?” ventured Callahan.
Ellwood, who obviously knew something of the mathematics of chance, smiled superiorly, but said nothing.
“The chance,” stated Trotter, “is 1 in 300 cubed, or 1 in 27,000,000!”
“Good night!” the chief exclaimed. “It was no lunatic’s dream then. The Michaux Z-ray—or Loucheur Z-ray, whatever we want to call it—is in our midst, all right, all right. On top of all that, Trotter, the mere fact that when Evans left his room the compass needle he was experimenting with wasn’t affected by the black satchel—and that after he found Mrs. Hunter dead it was pointing nearly east and west, steps in and announces its willingness to increase that 1 to 27,000,000 chance still further. In other words, Fergus J. Callahan is a lunatic for even hoping for a lunatic’s dream!”
“I’m afraid so, Chief,” replied Trotter consolingly. “That compass needle multiplies those odds a hundred-fold—and that fire shoots them up to a bigger figure than mere millions.” He bent his gaze to the typed papers once more. Then he asked a sudden question of the other of the three older men in the room. “Mr. Ellwood, what is a Class 76-Type B policy?”
Mr. Ellwood’s answer was a triumphant one. “It’s a policy which doesn’t pay out for death due to extraneous cause of any sort, i.e., war engines, weapons, scientific devices, missiles, etc. whether operated accidentally or with malice, or even self-acting. It—it covers every contingency possible on death from extraneous causes.”
“A damned unequitable policy, I call it, Mr. Ellwood.”
The man in the rich plus-fours was very huffed. “I don’t see it. It can be expanded with additional insurance, Type-A, to make full life protection.”
“Well,” acquiesced Trotter wearily, “I suppose you have to have something cheaper and still yet cheaper for your agents to sell—when their prospects fail to take the regular insurance.” He stared mirthlessly at Ellwood. “Why don’t you have a Big-Toe Policy, Class 999-Type Q, Ellwood—insure people’s big toes for a few cents—and the prospects would buy ’em from the agents just in order to get rid of ’em. The agents, of course—not the toes.” He paused. “A policy to every prospect, eh, Ellwood?”
“You defame a highly creditable indust—business,” retorted Ellwood, with towering dignity.
“Well, maybe I do,” agreed Trotter. He paused. “However,” he commented, “the nature of this particular policy that this young man holds means that he loses its face value in entirety?”
“Precisely.” Mr. Ellwood appeared, however, as a result of some bathycolpian train of reflection zigzagging through his own brain, to be just a trifle troubled in mien.
The old man in the shiny cutaway coat turned to Jerry. “You knew when you wrote this letter that you were killing off your chances to collect?” he asked curiously.
Jerry nodded slowly. “I am constrained to say that I did. I won’t say that I didn’t turn some moral acrobatics. However—” he made a weary gesture with his hands.
Trotter nodded his own head, with its porcupine-like grey hair, slowly, as though personally comprehending certain fine-drawn standards of probity that the world in general knew nothing of; as though, in a universe of moral turpitude and venality, he had at last encountered the one spirit that was kindred to himself. And his very gesture seemed somehow in full keeping with his own poverty-stricken, shiny appearance. He spoke again.
“Did you fight the thing out with yourself all night? The letter—” He turned to Callahan. “Chief, you say you got it this morning?”
Callahan nodded abstractedly. Jerry shook his head as Trotter fastened his gaze upon him once more. “No, Mr. Trotter—it was a quick engagement, with the enemy taking all the positions! I mailed my letter last night on Scott Street.”
“Mail it before the 9:30 Sunday night collection?”
“Amply so. Before even 9 o’clock.”
“Hm. Something went wrong. Too bad.” He turned back to the others and spoke to no one in particular. “We’d have had an interesting conversational session with this fellow Michaux-Loucheur if we’d picked him up before he despatched himself this morning. Of course, with all his things burned up—and at the time his machine too, supposedly—he’d have stood pat on any story of his identity he cared to give—even what affiliations he might have had with this Eberhardt, the model maker—and we couldn’t have checked on him. Nor would the Chief have third-degreed him on a simple felony such as manslaughter or criminal negligence.” Trotter sighed. “Yes, I’d like to have met him in the flesh. He would have been an interesting character study.”
“Well,” declared Callahan, “so far as what explanation he might have of affiliations with Eberhardt, we’re having Eberhardt and this Mother Hooch-Kooch brought in here—there’s a good lead on her because of some sister of hers running a cheap lodging joint somewhere near the Clark Street bridge—and they can tell their tale. Seems to me that girl who talked to Evans has given them a few things to explain.” He paused. “But so far as making a character study of Loucheur in the flesh, Trotter, just make it from his spectacles. Here they are. You’re good on that. Give us all a character reading.”
Trotter smiled deprecatingly. He took the tortoise-shell glasses from Callahan’s fingers, and inspecting first the hinge, then the frames themselves, opened the bows out and holding the lenses up to the horizontal junction of ceiling and wall, maneuvered them forward and back, up and down, to and fro, and then rotated them cyclically, each lens in turn. He dropped them to his knee.
“Well,” he said casually, “in the first place, the Frenchman, Michaux-Loucheur, is a gallant, and barring some various unknown factors involving eye-muscles which could complicate or even possibly nullify this particular end of my diagnosis, is a ladies’ man. That is to say, he likes women—and likes to be liked by them. He likes good clothing, too; particularly silk underwear. When he is very tired, by the way, his right eye deviates outward just a bit—that, as I say, only when he’s very tired. When he’s in any trouble involving enemies on his trail—such can be either imaginary enemies or real ones—problematical Japs or real Japs!—he’s inclined to get into a sort of a panic; that is, he doesn’t keep a cool head on his shoulders, particularly after nightfall.” Trotter paused. “Isn’t that enough to get the man’s psyche fairly well? If it isn’t, and you want purely childish details, I might say that when he forgets his watch or lets it run down, he has considerable trouble in telling time from distant clocks like—say—the Wrigley Tower clock, or the Marshall Field clock, at noontime or midnight, as well as at 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock, A.M. or P.M.; also at a quarter to each of those hours, and likewise at a quarter past. He invariably guesses at all the half-hours on all distant clocks, but is particularly disconcerted at half past 12, 3, 6 or 9.” He sighed, as would a man who was tired of being eternally called upon to give semi-public performances which to him were utterly puerile.
As for Jerry Evans, he felt himself staring as pointedly at Trotter as he could see Ellwood actually staring, and he wondered curiously if by any chance his eyes were popping from his head, as were the life insurance official’s. Callahan bore only an amused smile on his face. Ellwood was the first to speak.
“How—how—” he began. “Ah, that’s utter nonsense,” he broke off.
Trotter himself smiled wearily. He took up the spectacles. “Mr. Ellwood, take these glasses—and after you’ve noted what I will call your attention to, you can hand them to Mr. Evans over here.” Ellwood reached out gingerly across the chief’s table and took them. “You will note of course,” Trotter went on, “that they are for reading or writing only. Even though of French make, as indicated by the Paris optical manufacturing company’s name on the hinge, you can see that the bows are quite straight. They do not curve behind the ears—they are adapted only to one who uses them in one more or less constant position indoors—they are decidedly not adapted to hopping about a city, climbing into taxicabs, streetcars, brushing against people in elevators, and so forth. Now if you will hold each lens straight out—yes—as I did—keep the spectacle frame perfectly level—so that you view through it the horizontal junction of ceiling and floor, you will note that that junction is rendered slightly smaller and slightly more distinct in one direction at least, and that the part seen through the lens appears to be rotated definitely to the outward to the right by the right lens, and—”
Ellwood was manipulating them as he had been directed. “Yes, and the part of the junction seen through the left lens is rotated outward to the left. The left doesn’t make it quite as small as the right, though.”
“Why—” said Trotter, in mock amiability, “you can do this spectacle reading just as well as I, Ellwood!” He went on talking as Jerry himself took the spectacles and curiously repeated the performance, noting the features the old man in the shiny clothes had outlined. “The rotation of the horizontal image,” continued Trotter, “which in very, very weak glasses would have to be elicited by rocking the lens left and right, while at the same time it was held far out at arm’s length so as to intensify its properties tenfold, shows that it has ground upon it the surface of a cylinder—rather than just a sphere—which means, therefore, that this pair of spectacles is for the correction of astigmatism, and—” He looked about him. “Astigmatism is a slight flattening of the eyeball so that any image which falls on the retina is clearer along one meridian than on another. As for that, however, of course you all know that every eye in the world has some astigmatism.” He paused. “That is what renders optometry and ophthalmology different from medicine as a profession; any prospective patient in the world who walks into the office of an optometrist or oculist has a correctable error in his eye! There is required, as a matter of fact, a correction of about a half-diopter—which happens to be a small unit of focal strength—for the astigmatism existing in even the normal eye. However, normal eyes see without this artificial correction. They correct their error with a transverse effort of their living lens inside the eyeball, which operates by their accommodation muscle. On top of that, many abnormal eyes—too abnormal to make the necessary lenticular or accommodative effort, do their seeing without any spectacle correction, simply by viewing things consistently distorted and interpreting the distortion and blurring along certain meridians as a pare of reality. All right. Now to get back to this fellow—this inventor. Mr. Ellwood, at least, is skeptical of some of this purely elementary deduction.”
Trotter paused a moment as though to marshal his arguments, and then went on. “The cylinder surface ground on each of those lenses for the correction of Michaux-Loucheur’s astigmatism is a minus cylinder, as evidenced by the fact that each, when held close to the eye, reduces the size of the floor-wall junction, instead of increasing it as it would do if it were a plus cylinder. Now the axis of that right cylinder, I may say with great exactitude from long experience, is almost precisely at 45 degrees as an optometrist records such things, which is from the back of the lens and clockwise, counting as 0° the position where IX would be. Its strength is about, so nearly as I can guess, minus 2.75 diopters. The cylinder on the left is symmetrically displaced, with its axis at almost exactly 135 degrees—oblique astigmatism-common enough—millions of cases of it—but is a cylinder of lesser strength, about minus 1.75 diopters, I judge roughly.
“Now the minus element in his spectacles means that the man is in a sense a myope—or short-sighted, and the astigmatic element means that this short-sightedness exists only in certain meridians! With which, in conjunction with other features, we have his full diagnosis. First, such a man should wear his correction all the time, instead of just for reading or working. The fact that with that much ocular error, too great to possibly overcome by his own accommodative effort, he is content to go uncorrected about the streets, and to use his correction for reading only, indicates more than plainly that he resents some feeling of inferiority—a somatic inferiority—which such things as spectacles must give him in the presence, certainly not of men, but of women—and so he goes without. He likes the women, loves them, in fact. He lives in constant expectation of encountering interesting specimens of femininity. The fact of his right eye taking a considerably larger cylinder than his left means it is more greatly myopic—and such an eye, when the owner is tired and his eye is unconnected, diverges out a trifle because of the lack of stimulation to the convergence from retina to brain; and hence back to internal rectus muscle. About his getting into a blue funk easily if he has enemies about him—or thinks he has!—you must remember that such a man lives in a partial, or semi-fog, in which faces across the street while fully visible, unlike in the case of the true myope, are yet not perfectly delineated because of distortion along certain meridians. Thus any stranger—to him—may easily be an enemy: a sallow-faced, round visaged white man may be a Japanese! Such a man—an astigmatic of this degree—takes panic easily, shoots too quickly if he is armed, loses his nerve in a crisis much more quickly than the man with perfect vision in all meridians.”
“And the trouble in telling the time on distant clocks?” asked Jerry.
Mr. Trotter turned the battery of his gaze on the speaker. Then he himself spoke. “Michaux-Loucheur’s right cylinder axis, being at 45 degrees, corrected, by its curvature, a short-sighted meridian existing at 135 degrees. His left cylinder axis being at 135 degrees, corrected a less short-sighted meridian at 45 degrees. Yet nevertheless when the hands of distant clocks lay in either of these short-sighted meridians, he wasn’t disconcerted at all because the other eye, being at its best—having normal sight, in fact—in that meridian, read the time. But there were four points on the clock when its hands lay completely at positions where the plotted graphs of visibility from ‘poor’ to ‘normal’ for each eye intersected each other—at midway points on each graph, in fact—and being identical positions for both eyes, meant that neither eye could read for the other. Those four points lay in the vertical and horizontal meridians, and were represented on the clock by the Roman digits XII and VI, and IX and III. They give us 16 positions for the two hands in which, for Michaux-Loucheur, telling time at a distance was the sorriest kind of guesswork!”
The old man stopped, apologetically. By the respectful silence that greeted his swift presentation of facts geometrical, it was plain that he was the only student of physiological optics in that room, and that he was moreover a master of his subject. It was only Ellwood who finally broke the silence with a single question.
