The box from japan, p.42
The Box from Japan, page 42
The attendant with the cauliflowered ears and striped trunks had vanished, closing the door gently behind him. Carr Halsey drew up the squat stone stool. He spoke in a low voice, for general prudence’s sake. “Well, Uncle, I suppose you’ve been wondering exactly what my good news was?”
“Indeed I have,” replied his uncle, dislodging a pair of skinny arms out of the tight mummy-like shroud. He stroked one side of his white mustache appraisingly, as though to make sure his treatment hadn’t caused it to vanish. “When Mr. Jones—yes, our Harvey Ellsworth Jones—dropped me off here from his car today after our long after-luncheon chat, I felt so worried that I half believed I was wasting my time even to try to take a treatment. But your news has made me feel like a new man. Or else the fine sleep I’ve just had. Anyway—” He broke off. “Well, Carr, tell me now what you have to tell me. Babson, hopping over here with that $2 taxi money you were so kind as to advance him, gave me the barest details only, and, then I sent him scuttling back to the office; he was beginning to melt a bit even as he stood here in his clothes. You and I don’t feel the mugginess, you see.”
“No, that’s true. But when Babson perspires, his collar won’t wilt! That’s one sure thing. The other sure thing, Uncle, is that that old celluloid neck-yoke of his will be in the Smithsonian Institute some day, mark my word!”
His uncle half smiled: “Be easy on Babson, Carr. He’s—he’s a fixture in our outfit.”
“A symbol of the magic lantern eras, eh, Uncle?”
“Perhaps—yes. Well, Carr, you seem to be in cheerful fettle. Everything must be shaping up wonderfully for us in some way.”
“It is, Uncle. Not only is it true what Babson conveyed to you—that by morning we have—or did then have—a possible way to reach our man directly, but subsequent developments mean that every man on the Chicago police force is looking for him tonight—and that we get first exclusive ‘in’ with him if and when they pick him up.” His face clouded up. “The miserably unhappy feature of it is, though, Uncle, that our getting to C.X.H.—yes, you know who I mean—eventuates solely out of the fact that I’ve now lost an old, old school friend.”
His uncle sat halfway up, face grave, leaning on one somewhat emaciated elbow: “Spill it all, Carr. Things have evidently been going on in that big sunny world upstairs above us.”
So Halsey, in a low guarded voice, related all the events of the day since, Japanese box under arm, he had left his uncle that morning, giving way to the wrathful waiting minority lady stockholder of American Projectiscope; in turn he described the contents of that Japanese box, the later visit of the Jap, Mr. T. Sumiko, to his Tower Court lodgings, the calling card the evasive Oriental had withdrawn on which to diagram roughly the label of that bottle, supposedly shipped to him 5 years before by his brother, and which calling card he had in turn left behind him, bearing on its reverse side the carefully printed out name of Clifford X. Hemingway. Then he detailed his visit to Braisted’s experimental quarters in the Electrical Temple, and both his viewing of that little conversational scene on the backstage of the Regent Theatre, London, as well as the glimpse he had caught in the hands of Sir Alfred Leets of a box almost identical with the one he had brought to Hall No. 457. He related the subsequent cabled reply from the British actor, disposing of the apparent mystery about that box, and carried his story rapidly up through the attempted near-assassination of Miss Loris by the portly German-speaking man in the gray Cyclops car, his own later discovery of Proctor’s body, the test tube of Mazoru-Ikeuna completely emptied, his finding of both heelplate indentation and Russian medal, and his bad luck with the latter important object. Indeed, he carried the entire story, fact by fact, up to where one, Carr Halsey, clad only in a huge Turkish towel, sat in a sultry atmosphere, atop a stone stool, not far from a powerful wall holding in the Chicago River, purling its way somewhere without. His uncle, head resting on hand, listened in rapt silence.
“And so, Carr,” he commented eagerly, “you’ve actually fixed it, then, with detective headquarters for us to be the first of any outsiders to see this Hemingway, the moment he’s captured?”
“I haven’t—no,” his nephew replied. “But Artemus Baxter—my friend—has. He states that Captain Duffy over there is definitely obligated to him on a matter of a little reward split that he helped Duffy, some time back, to get; and Duffy, he says, has given him outright assurance so far as you are concerned. Personally speaking though, Uncle, I don’t think it would be a half bad idea if we were to kick in with a little reward offer to spur on this fellow Hemingway’s associates, if he ever had any, or his landlady, if he roomed somewhere, to turn in information on him quick. And frankly, between you and me, I don’t think it would be so bad if we could slip this fellow Duffy, by way of Baxter, for instance, a little pourboire of—say—a few hundred dollars anyway. Gratitude talks, yes. But money talks a little more so! And Hemingway, after all, is our all—our everything. How do we stand so far as dealing out a little cash goes?”
His uncle frowned. “Gad, Carr, I don’t see my way clear to—to doing anything like that. Even a money tip for this Duffy—I couldn’t raise that tonight. The company’s a wee bit overdrawn at the bank now, and anything due us in the next few days is overshadowed by the notes the bank is holding against us. We’re—we’re—confound it, Carr, we’re terribly tight. I threw a chattel mortgage day before yesterday on all my house furnishings out there on Prairie Avenue, to meet the payroll alone. And I’ve had a mortgage loan on my home for months. I honestly don’t know where I could raise money to that extent—and Lord knows not tonight, anyway.”
“Nor I either,” admitted Carr Halsey, with a half-laugh. “Well, Uncle, Baxter seems to feel he’s got pretty good assurances out of the bureau head. So we’ll rest on that tonight. That murder unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—who knows!—broke just a little bit too late to make the thousands and thousands of outlying home newspaper deliveries. The morning paper deliveries will effect a far more perfect news coverage. But the news broadcasts will be blaring in one million Chicago homes tonight. Also, the occupants of perhaps a half-million Chicago homes may be out in full force, this fair eve in the merry month of Sol, autoing, swimming at the beaches, or God knows what. If nothing happens, however, before tomorrow morning, at 9 a.m., we see our Jap, and then we do get our first chance to find out once and for all where Clifford X. Hemingway is—or was!—when the Jap obtained that card from him.”
“But—but Carr,” put in Roger Halsey, passing a hand helplessly and confusedly over his forehead, “in view of the fact that Proctor’s murder is going to be detailed fully in all the late evening papers, as well as that piece of incriminating writing he left—”
Halsey raised a hand. “I know what’s faintly taking form in your mind, Uncle. And you want to suggest that the Jap will never show up again, eh?” He half shook his head. “I’m going to go into all those questions that are being born in your brain right this minute, but the only satisfying answer, right off the bat, to the question I just rendered myself, Uncle, is that I’ve got the bottle of Mazoru-Ikeuna! And as sure as the Lord put minnows in the ocean, that Jap or somebody back of him either wants that stuff—or else wants it out of my hands. So for the present then, until I outline a number of peculiar theories that are more than possible, —but which you don’t yet see—just presume that I shall have a visitor tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.”
“And if that should turn out to be so, Carr, then it might mean that if Hemingway isn’t picked up tonight, you yourself may be the means of turning him over to the police?”
“Exactly. If we can get the real line on him from—or through, and unbeknown to—the Jap—and this will involve some careful planning between Baxter and myself tonight—then we won’t take chances with the police. Not at first, that is. I’ll have Baxter get a husky man from the Sun—one of those birds with a private star and a gun, who guard disputed newspaper stands—and we’ll take Hemingway ourselves—except that we shall hold private confab of a pseudo-commercial nature concerning the price asked for a certain 2 shares of stock before we journey bureauward. Said confab, whether it eventuate in a price of $18 or $18,000 for the stock, will be crystallized in an option, paid out of my pockets—a one-day option at $50 or so, is all we need, I take it, for once we’ve got the rights on the stock, and can deliver the Zell Process, the First National Bank I presume will take it up for us out of our $900,000 rights in that escrowed million. If not, any two-by-four bank in Chicago will be glad to do it. Am I right?” His uncle nodded. Whereupon the younger man added: “In any event, Uncle, we’re just seventy jumps ahead of the Orski crowd. And little they dream it, too.”
The older man was silent a moment, thoughtful.
“Carr,” he asked suddenly, “just what would you do if your plans for utilizing that Jap’s desire to get that liquid are successful—and Hemingway made that stock, or rather the option on it, the price of—well—his escape?”
Carr Halsey made a helpless gesture with his hands: “Uncle, don’t propound horrible ethical questions before they arise. In the first place, as I understand it, he doesn’t even dream he owns the stock. In the second, he wouldn’t have the least idea that the ancient junk—yes, Uncle, stock in a magic lantern company is junk today—was worth anything within a million miles of what it really is. In the third place he—” He broke off, shaking his head. “No, I tell you he won’t even attempt a bargain like that. He’ll be thinking of habeas corpuses, and a good criminal lawyer and something to pay him with. We’ll play as fair as we have to, and a little fairer, maybe. But we won’t get mushy. No! For after all—” Carr Halsey’s face darkened. “—if he killed Proctor—or if he’s merely involved in killing him, then—” He stopped significantly.
“Carr,” his uncle put in, “I want to propound one particular conundrum to you now that puzzles me deeply. To begin with first, however, I grant your proof, set forth by you a minute or so ago when you were describing all these events, that Proctor was murdered deliberately either to stop an analysis of that blue liquid, or else to stall off a report of its analysis that might already have been made, or thirdly, possibly, as a threat to you to cease all further efforts to learn what it’s composed of, or fourthly, out of an unexpected argument resulting from efforts along those lines. The mathematical certainty, as you outlined it, of some clique involved with the Mazoru-Ikeuna being fully on to the connection between it, Proctor and you, is too completely established by the fact that that Loris girl, who’s nothing but a spy of some sort, was in both his place today, and yours as well, of all the millions of places in Chicago. All right. In a minute I’m going to ask you a puzzling one: namely, to explain the coincidence that Proctor should have known enough about his unknown assailant—or assailants—to write the name of one on the floor. In other words, how—”
Carr Halsey raised a hand. “No coincidence at all, when you hear what I have to offer further on that point. I’ll give you a mighty good explanation as to that. Several, in fact! But go ahead.”
“Well, ahead of that query, comes first the more logical initial query: exactly how did they get on to the triple connection between you, Proctor and the blue liquid? Granting that a confederate of the Jap followed you today, were you easily followable? How’d you travel today to get to Bush Bourse? And how could they know that, once inside Bush Bourse, you went to Proctor’s place with it?”
“One question at a time, Uncle. One at a time! I’m not one-hundred-percent certain by any means that it was a confederate of the Jap who followed me. I’d just as soon believe that he was being followed himself—and may have been followed for some days, so far as anybody knows. Don’t forget about that big boy with the square-cut brown goatee who kicked my landlady’s estimable pussy-cat down the front steps and then proceeded to crack Miss Loris a nasty one across the side of her head, after he saw that that bottle of Mazoru-Ikeuna was standing on my front table and that my room was apparently unoccupied. We don’t know who’s playing with whom, nor who against whom, nor doublecrossing whom, in this game. But about your first question. I’ll say I was followable, Uncle! I went to Bush Bourse, when I did so, as openly as the devil. I could have been dogged, so far as that goes, straight from the express auction itself—although it’s true that I left my address there, and my trail may have started entirely with my recorded address. That’s how the Jap explains his coming to Tower Court, anyway. But about that blazing trail of mine. First, I carried the Jap box openly under my arm to your Lindbergh Building—and out again, a while later, openly to my studio in the Majestic Theatre Building. The box marked me pretty plainly all the way, I’d venture. I emerged a while later from the Majestic Theatre Building, without it, however, and openly went home by the State Street subway, transferring eastward to the Chicago Avenue surface car. After this Sumiko called and went—and by golly he went, Uncle, for I saw him climb painfully aboard a westbound Chicago Avenue surface car, cane and all—I left the house and couldn’t find a cab; so took the State Street subway down again to Monroe Street—my studio, that is. I had to wait a couple of minutes on the platform, and plenty of passengers straggled in behind me while I waited. When I got the box again downtown, I couldn’t find a cab right at hand, and so walked west along Monroe Street to Clark Street, and there boarded a Clark Street subway train northward, where I got off six or seven minutes later and went into Bush Bourse. Now about your last question. The elevator boy in Bush Bourse mentioned, at the time we were standing around Proctor’s body, that Proctor was the only chemist in the building. He said, in fact, that on the Diptych—that’s just a fool fancy word, Uncle, for foyer directory!—that on the Diptych Proctor was listed both under his own name, alphabetically, that is, and under the ‘CHEMISTS’ classification of tenants, except that Proctor was the only chemist in the place. I took occasion, just the same, to look into that when I went out, after departing that scene of death. It’s correct—exactly as the boy says.” Carr Halsey paused a second, marshaling his thoughts. “Now granting that I was followed from Monroe Street to Bush Bourse today, with that boxed bottle under my arm, the indisputable inference by anybody following me, and in the ‘know’ of things would be that I wasn’t taking that stuff so hot-footedly to a dance school, a voice instructress, nor a real estate office! But to a chemist. And that being so, the chemist would be Proctor and nobody else. At least in that building!”
“Well, that’s clear enough. Now for my conundrum! How on earth do you account then, Carr, for the coincidence that Proctor should know enough about his assailant to write out his name and some facts about him? Answer that one, boy, if you can.”
“I can give a number of hypotheses,” said his nephew promptly, but troubledly, “but that’s only what each one can be for the moment. We know definitely, of course, that Clifford X. Hemingway, ex-University of Wisconsin student, is in some way connected with the Jap’s end of the outfit trying to recover that supply of Mazoru-Ikeuna. The Jap had Hemingway’s card, didn’t he? Yes. The card ties ’em together damningly. One thing, I’ll admit, however, worries me just a little bit, every now and then; it’s that they may have planted that information at Wen’s fingertips. Yes, Uncle, that writing. No, I’m not reminiscent of his handwriting from so far back as college days. If they did plant it, however, they would have been sure to stick the ‘X’ in it to make it unmistakably the Clifford X. Hemingway. Still, they smudged it all partly off. And yet again—that’s just the thing that would be a sort of crowning touch, wouldn’t it?” He paused. “Purely academic, all this, of course. For us, Uncle. We want Hemingway and a certain million dollar sale of our Zell Process. He will ultimately have to account for his connection with all affairs—all by himself. Whether he’s directly involved, or whether he’s the victim of a plant. So be it! But again about these hypotheses. Since we know Hemingway is connected with the Jap or the latter’s outfit, he may have been indeed the one delegated to go to the laboratory, and may have been fatuous enough to think he could induce Proctor to spill the sample of Mazoru-Ikeuna in the sink, and render me a fake report of some sort. And I know Wen only too well! He’d have played one naughty game of poker, I’m telling you, Uncle. He’d have pretended to play in with the fixer—or fixers, as the case may be—till he’d got something concrete or damning out of them; he’d have smoothly jimmied a more or less guileless white man like Hemingway—never a Jap, I’ll grant—into putting a lot of cards face up on the table. Then he’d have given ’em a—a—a belly laugh. Exactly that, Uncle. A belly laugh! They’d have figured then that they would have had to kill him just to stop his mouth alone, let alone his chemical manipulations. And that’s why they might have come back and smudged out anything he’d have written. Partially out, anyway. For they didn’t do exactly the best job in the world on that smudging. Now if you want a few more or less untenable hypotheses, one would be that they handed him some verbal bunk and somehow used the Clifford X. Hemingway name in it. Again, that he might even have recognized his visitor—or one of them—Proctor did go about town a bit, you know: he did get to meet a fair number of people. But that’s as far as I can hypothesize, Uncle. It’s all pretty badly obscured as yet. We may narrow things down a bit when the Municipal Crime Laboratory checks that handwriting with Proctor’s records, as it would do as a matter of mere criminological routine. I hope it checks; otherwise the official chase for Clifford X. Hemingway might die down a bit if the writing involving him were found to be a plant. The Mazoru-Ikeuna affair is, as I say, badly obscured as yet. That girl—spy, as she undoubtedly is, bless her histrionic and charming pretty little misguided soul!—knocked out for the moment by a dirty murderous clip on the head by that German speaking gazabo with the square-cut goatee who says ‘presto melto’ and makes huge Cyclops cars vanish. Proctor himself murdered, his lips stopped entirely, and presumably knowing something as he died that the police ought to have—else it wouldn’t have been smudged out, would it?”
