A copy of beowulf, p.5
A Copy of Beowulf, page 5
CHAPTER VIII
by Hazel Goodwin Keeler
THE BLACKMAILER!
“Jumpy” Jerriman was about to step into the public phone booth he had chosen as the best-suited in Chicago’s entire Loop for the secrecy he desired. For he wanted to make a call that would catapult another great blob of money in his direction without any possibility of blackmail charges. He paused on the threshold of the booth, however, and drew from his shirt pocket a saffron-colored telegraph form, upon which he had written a message a moment earlier, as he had stood at the high desk-counter in the Western Union Telegraph Office next door. He had, nevertheless, walked out of that office without sending the message, for it was not certain but that a change or two might be advisable.
The wire was addressed to “Miss Melodee Ashbrooke” in care of “The Biggest Little Circus on Earth”, playing, at the moment, at a town named Goshen q Corners, situated in that endless, monotonous country west of Mid-west, but far short of the Coast. The prospective wire ran:
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE COMPLETE EVIDENCE THAT A CERTAIN LUG IN YOUR SHOW WHO CALLS HIMSELF “JULES DIVALO” IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT HE CLAIMS, ESPECIALLY THAT HE IS NOT A “FOUNDLING” AS HE CLAIMS—HAH!—SEND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS IN FORM OF CERTIFIED CHECK TO UNDERSIGNED AT GENERAL DELIVERY, CHICAGO, AND FULL DOPE WILL BE SENT YOU. ALSO ENCLOSE YOUR ROUTE FOR NEXT WEEK.
JACK JERRIMAN.
“Tie that!” he ruminated, disgustedly, as he finished re-reading his penciled words. “A seasoned buck trying to convince a young unsuspecting gal that he’s of unknown origin just because she believes she herself was born in the dark of the moon! And getting away with it! Foundling tossed on a doorstep in Paris, my eye! Him who grew up right alongside of me, back of the stock-yards here—his old man and old lady hitched by bell, book and orange-blossom!” Jumpy Jerriman grew angrier and angrier as he thought of the telephone conversation he had had with DiValo earlier in the day, via information from the U.S. Circus Guide. He had really called DiValo to ask for a job with the circus.
“I’d be glad to be even a roustabout with your show,” Jumpy had assured the other.
“So sorry,” had come the answer, “but I’m leaving the show myself, shortly, and taking a certain charming young lady with me.” After which, DiValo had debonairly—and somewhat self-satisfiedly!—conveyed a number of highly confidential details about the situation in question and the “charming young lady” herself. And had said a curt goodbye.
“That’s what he thinks,” Jumpy was now pondering bitterly. “Well me—I got good 24-karat inside info that’ll scotch that move in a hurry. And Jules DiValo is due to find out that possessing inside info is this baby’s meat and drink!”
Reading over again the carefully worked-out phraseology of his wire, he definitely decided to sleep on it and re-word it tomorrow, substituting a larger figure for the $25; raise it, perhaps, to $50; even $100. Cripes—why wouldn’t it be worth it to a squab to learn that her dauntless woo-pitcher was a phoney? Why wouldn’t it be worth even more than a hundred? She could rake it together somehow.
Yes, he’d sleep on it. Tearing the message into tiny bits, he impetuously threw them to the floor; they settled like dirty water-spots over the white stone tiling, in front of the booth door.
Opening the latter, Jumpy went in, lifted the instrument, drew forth a dime from his pocket and, inserting it, dialled the number he wished. As the ringing sound started, he glanced through the glassed door, into the vast interior of the gigantic establishment on Madison Street near the west fringe of the Loop; a so-called drug store that offered merchandise from corsets to canoes; from aspirin to furnace stokers. Occupying one corner of a busy street intersection, it had several exits, and one was just back of the booth where Jumpy waited. This suited him fine, for “caution” was his middle name; if anyone wanted to check back to determine where the call was coming from and sent snoopers over there, they’d find an empty booth, or a new caller in it. That was the beauty of always choosing a hell of a busy place in which to make calls.
But now, instrument at ear, he heard a receiver lifted and the housemaid’s voice at the other end.
“Miss Woodley, please,” he demanded softly.
“Miss Woodley’s down in bed,” came the harsh reply. Pneumonia!—all account of you!” A burst of emotion in the last phrase gave it a hysterical tang.
Jumpy was silent a moment. Still, he told himself, in spite of her accusation, the maid could know nothing—at least nothing specific.
“Pneumonia!” he repeated, fingering the receiver. “That’s a new gag!” He studied on this a moment. “Well, you tell Orchid she’d better change her mind p.d.q. and talk to me—or I’ll decide to get sore. She won’t have to get up; her pink and white ’phone’s right beside her bed, so you stick it in her lily white hand pronto.”
There was a moment’s pause, during which Jumpy, formally known as Jack, took occasion to peer through the small opening he had allowed along the closing edge of the door of the telephone booth. At last it had grown dark outside of the open entrance of the store. These everlasting summer days! The electric lights that dotted the ceiling of the drugstore made the place light as day. No one seemed to be even looking toward the telephone booths.
“Yes?” The word over the receiver brought Jumpy to attention.
“Wait a sec’,” he answered. Carefully, and soundlessly, he drew the door closed to the final inch, till the latch snapped. Indirect light flooded the little space, and a sudden reflection of his own thin self shot into the partition glass.
“Take it away, Orchid,” he resumed, into the mouthpiece. “I see it’s the sick gag now. That’s got whiskers.”
“Jack—please let me have that letter. I’ve paid you for it over and over again—you’ve promised and promised. You’ve got everything now but my fall coat, and—”
“Whoa! Is that maid in there?”
“No—no! I sent her out. Do you think—”
“No, of course not—” he corrected himself quickly.
“I say you’ve got everything I ever had, now.” It was a sort of wail.
Her voice did sound sick, at that, he ruminated. But what the hell! Jumpy had himself to look out for, didn’t he? He put his lips more closely against the mouthpiece, for the next words must not be heard by any ear but the ear of that little black cone itself.
“So the death was accidental—eh?”
He heard a gasp. No answer came.
“All right,” he ordered softly, keeping his voice distinct and nasal. “I’ll wait exactly thirty seconds for you to make up your mind whether it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no’—for tonight! Take your time to decide. But not too much time.”
He listened a moment longer; then, turning his body slightly, leaned with his elbow against the small shelf to wait.
The lights glared above, from ambush—that was the devil of these damn modern joints: the light-bulbs couldn’t be unscrewed! He glanced again at his reflection in the partition glass. Coatless as he was, the clean white shirt he wore looked as though it were hanging on a coat-hanger—empty! A split in a post, that’s what he was! His face had grown so sharp along the front edge that it looked like a hatchet. And his eyes—nertz! He had seen the darting black eyes of hawks in the zoo look like that. It was nothing but worry, that was all—this finicking phoney-prosperity business. To share in it, a guy had to get a job and work like hell! Look out for himself now, was it? Well, then, he would look out for himself!
He took out his dollar watch. Nine o’clock! But even as he put it back into his hip pocket, the tremulous voice again came over the wire. He spun about to the instrument.
“Jack—” Orchid’s voice sounded as if she were crying. “Let me tell you something. The doctor knows I’m worrying over something. He’s known it a year—almost ever since Aunt Gwen died. Jack, he said if I don’t stop worrying, I’ll not get well of this. Jack—he says worry lowers people’s resistance and—”
“Oh, cut it, will you?” These whining women! She wasn’t like that when he had first known her, in the illustration class at the Institute of Art. Lucky she didn’t know that tears were his Achilles heel! She’d almost had him going soft for a minute. He decided to force her to the issue at once. Withdrawing some penciled notations from his shirt pocket with his free hand. “Say! Remember this?” he asked. “It starts with a quote: ‘My dearest Jack:’ Remember that? Here’s another line: ‘Since you asked me to marry you, I have done a great deal of deep thinking. You wondered why I didn’t give you my answer last evening. I know it hurt you, my hesitating, and I never want to hurt you, Jack—never. In fact, dear, it is because I cannot bear to hurt you that I am telling you now, in this letter, what I have that is weighing on my heart so dreadfully—You can see, darling, how great is my trust in you: as great as my love for you. If, after you have read this, you care to marry me, I’m—’”
“Please. Please.” The word kept coming over the receiver like a sob.
“‘Jack, I killed my aunt—’” he quoted the climax of the note.
“Don’t! It’s a lie—I won’t listen,” cried the girl. “You know—and I know—I never wrote that letter.”
“Oh, no? Well, try to convince a hand-writing expert that that’s not your handwritten signature, and your own typewriter type——”
“You know—and I know, Jack, how you got my signature—I’ve known a long time, God help me! As I’ve been lying here, all those little incidents have come back to me—back to my mind—little things that seemed so insignificant last fall when they happened. I remember that loose-leafed book, now, that you made of white sheets of heavy bond, that you said you made for a photograph album—I remember how you said you made it yourself, to be different, because the ordinary kind was so common—I remember how you wouldn’t have any picture of me but that one poor photograph. I know that that was because it was the only one I had with a black background. That was so I’d be forced to autograph it for you on the page it was pasted to. I remember how it was pasted to the page only in the upper two corners. Every bit of it, Jack, has come back to me. The details of it, that seemed so trifling when they happened, came up to light as if a searchlight crept over them, one after the other. But, Jack, truly, there is no more to give you. It’s as bad as this—that I don’t know what’s to become of Dad and me. He won’t get back the use of his limbs for two years, they tell us—”
“You inherited your aunt’s house, didn’t you?—that’s in your name now. You could mortgage it for a few months—it wouldn’t be for long. You didn’t ever think I missed this week’s gossip column in Tattle magazine, did you? I may not read newspapers much, but I never miss the Tattle Weekly, I can also tell you. So, you see, I’m wise about you and the favorite nephew of Mr. Who’s Who himself—your being that way about each other. You and your dad won’t want for financial latitude from now on, to say the least!”
“Jack, Jack—I’m not engaged—I swear it! I haven’t said yes—not yet—not with your letter hanging over my head—and over his. And Aunt Gwen left the house to Dad.”
“Don’t give me that pap. Anyway, you’re wearing this fellow’s rock this minute or I’m a liar. Well, I want that ring—see? I want it tonight. Tell him you lost it. I’ll see you at 11 P.M. That gives you a couple of hours. You know the meeting place—”
“Jack, I haven’t—”
“Just try to forget this part,” he interrupted. He unrolled the slip of paper notes on his finger. “‘Aunt Gwen had so many little brown bottles from the corner drug store in her bathroom chest—almost all four-ounce ones—all alike—”
“Don’t—don’t—” cried Orchid.
“‘—iodine on the top shelf in the furthest corner—tincture of Valerian on the bottom shelf in the middle, for her nerves—because the first thing she did every evening when she reached home from her office downtown, was to go into her bathroom and, before she bathed, drink a teaspoonful or two of Valerian right from the mouth of the bottle. She was the only one who touched it, she always said, and that made it all right—’”
“I’ve got to hang up, Jack. I think I’m going to faint—I feel so queer—”
“‘—and I switched the bottles!’” he finished hurriedly. “And it’s all written right on the very typewriter you inherited from your aunt.”
“That was easy enough for you to do yourself, Jack—type on Aunt Gwen’s machine—you always waited for me in her study so as to look at her books, you said. Every time you called on me to extend your sympathy in our bereavement, and you waited here for me to come downstairs, you waited in my aunt’s study. I didn’t see through that ‘sympathy’ then—”
There were voices close outside the frosted glass of the booth door.
“I gotta cut this,” he said even more softly into the mouthpiece. “See you tonight. Eleven P.M. Take it or leave it.”
He had the receiver all but back on the hook.
“Jack!” The words came fairly rocking over the wire. “Just one little second—listen to me—”
Reluctantly he put the receiver back to his ear.
“I’m truly ill, Jack. When I tried to get out of bed today, I fell on the floor; I don’t think I’m going to get well—the suspense and all. And if I didn’t, then your letter would be worthless. Worthless, Jack. Why can’t you do one kind, big deed in your life—we all need to do a few really good things in life, to balance up our consciences—every one of us—”
But Jumpy had stopped listening after her first statement. For her first sentence forced him to think hard for several alarmed moments. Orchid might have the dope, at that! Hell! She sounded weak enough to kick off—she was just the type to go under, and he’d heard that people who were near death were often uncanny in their fore-knowledge of it. The letter then would in truth be worthless, sure enough. Better grab the cash and let the credit go to blazes. That was the ticket. Bill Endicott, the gossip columnist of Tattle Weekly, had told Jumpy that they sometimes paid a thousand for something “really bombshell.” Jumpy felt he might even shove that bid upwards—considering Orchid’s family’s place in the social register. Then let Orchid Woodley kick off and be damned. He’d gotten fair enough returns from her and his small investment in her of cash and genius, as it stood. Jeez! He’d only joined the illustration class in an effort to get in with some of the upper crust. Orchid Woodley had been the most ingenuous of the lot: easy to get in with; easy as hell to frighten!—it was like taking candy from a baby. So what if she was worked dry? He’d gotten plenty.
“Okay, little Black Eyes—forget I ever called you tonight. As far as you’re concerned, the letter doesn’t exist—and I’ve only been talking about the weather. You’re right and I’m wrong. See?”
“Oh Jack—thank God, thank God! I knew if I only had faith in Him, he would guard me and not let—”
But Jumpy had jammed the receiver back on the hook in an agony of restiveness. Churchy mouthings—pfah! Pfah in infinity! He took a deep, sustaining breath.
Then he turned about; opened the door a bare crack. This darkened the booth. He peered-cautiously about the store preparatory to making a quick, quiet dart for the street door nearest him.
Customers of every age and description thronged the wide aisles that ran like the branches of a river between the counter displays. These stood like islands, lush with merchandise. The wildest imaginable range was available in the latter; dolls of every type occupied one gigantic tiered counter, and automotive toy tractors, trucks and cranes, another. Multiple aquariums formed a third. Here, odd plumed fish from every clime swam puzzledly, unable to close their eyes against the blinding green, red and yellow neon lights that searched them out wherever they dashed, and flooded them relentlessly. There were displays of cosmetics; of intimate apparel; of rubber swim trunks and caps; of sun-glasses; of reading spectacles; of cameras; of everything imaginable. One great section of the seemingly endless store was fenced off and devoted to tables where less hurried diners were served. Along part of still another section of the store ran a counter where ready-made sandwiches, cut cake and pie and coffee were offered. Along this, on high stools and elbow to elbow perched customers like huge, vari-colored, vari-sized puppets, while behind each was a line of 3 or 4 of the still-hungry who waited for the stool’s occupant to finish and for the line to move up by one. There was, of course, a chemist’s, or medical prescription desk, were one fortunate enough to find it!
He slipped out now from the booth. And made his exit inconspicuously through the street door nearest him.
* * * *
He found himself outside, in the comparative darkness of Madison Street at the mouth of the alley. That was the last time he’d have to risk being pinned for blackmail! Could have been a dick on Orchid’s line all the time. Orchid was ripe to get wise any minute, really, and appeal to her old man for advice. Anyway—she was sick, on the point of dying, and that, alone, settled it. It was full steam ahead in another direction now!
It was a matter of but a few seconds before Jumpy emerged at the intersection of the alley with the next street—a street whose lights were off for the moment due to some interruption of current supply, and which was right now as dark as one in a nightmare. On this street ran the carline which he used, and as a streetcar came bowling along noisily, carrying lights of its own, Jumpy jumped it and, on the platform, pulled out of his pocket the twenty cents fare and walked the entire length of the almost empty car. Taking up a position near the front, and pulling at each trousers knee, he sat down. He relaxed as much as Jumpy could relax, and set his face to receive the wind from the open window; wind which the speed of the car augmented as it flew along gaily, almost without a stop, past the various districts of the city.
