The box from japan, p.50
The Box from Japan, page 50
“I’m all right. The knight fell into the moat and was drowned, I hope, and here’s an exact reproduction of the Mazoru label.”
Baxter stared at him, then the new label. “I don’t know about the knight,” he said, “but you’ve a perfect duplication there all right. Yes, perfect.”
With which Baxter laid it out face down on another piece of newspaper torn from the bureau drawer lining, and smeared it well with paste from his tube. With the empty brown bottle on the dresser, next the other, he affirmed the imitation label in the same spot, massaging it painstakingly around so that not a blister of trapped air remained under it.
He stood off.
“Fair enough. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”
Pulling out the collapsible washbowl in one corner of the room, Baxter filled its basin full with clean tepidly warm water, and stood Tweedledee, the empty brother, on the floor below it. Dipping his rubber tube in the water, and making a wry face as he sucked on the other end, he put the latter end into Tweedledee’s neck and siphoned off the water into him. Again he repeated the operation, partly, at least. Now he brought Tweedledee back to Tweedledum, the Mazoru-filled brother. The water line was an inch or so higher than the Mazoru-Ikeuna line. “We’ll split the difference,” Baxter said, “with respect to the several ounces that were left with Proctor.”
Now into Tweedledee he poured a generous amount of the fine white Prusso powder, and corking it, shook it up. The change of the contents from transparency to blueness was, of course, not visible through the deep brown of the bottle, except that the latter seemed to become more opaque than ever. Two clean glass tumblers had been revealed, with the drawing out of the washbasin, on a narrow plate-glass ledge above its shining faucet handles. Baxter brought them to the bureau. Into one he poured out carefully an inch of the Mazoru. Into the other he poured out an inch of the solution he had just made up. He held both tumblers up to the electric light, tilting them greatly so that the cylindrical volumes of their contents thinned out into liquid wedges, and equally, permitting light to pass through each.
“A little insufficiently blue as yet,” Baxter commented. “Another teaspoonful of Prusso in Tweedledee.”
Another dose, another shake-up, and a new comparison showed that although not in brilliancy, but in depth of blue, Tweedledee and Tweedledum were approaching closer. One last pinch—and the experiment, again repeated, showed that the bluenesses were practically identical in depth, although there was not much comparison in the actual brilliancies.
Baxter jammed the cork of the Stiglitz Springs mineral water bottle far in, till its top, in fact, was flush with the lip of the bottle neck. Striking a hot flame on a mechanical cigarette lighter he took from his pocket, he held his stick of red sealing wax over the cork. It dripped, dripped, dripped, covering the top of the cork, the bottle lip, and then running discreetly a ways over the edge, entirely around. Baxter extinguished the lighter and removed his stick of wax.
“Now,” he said, “friend Sumiko may or may not recall your own words of early this morning, that you’ve peeked inside at that blue liquid: but he does know, of course, in view of this Bush Bourse job, that you gave Proctor a small quantity of the stuff. Just exactly how much doesn’t matter greatly, I think. So I compromised on that in filling Tweedledee up. But now we put the finishing touch of genuineness on our bottle.” And twisting in the corkscrew a short ways, he drew forth the cork with a mighty “plop” and cracking of wax all around, for this stopper did not slide forth as oleaginously as did that other cork from that real bottle of oily Mazoru-Ikeuna. Having created thus the necessary pierced hole in the top wax, as well as the required breakage in the marginal wax all around, he thrust the stopper far back in the bottle neck again, down to its very summit.
Now he placed the tightly re-corked vessel gently in the wooden skull-box container of the original Mazoru-Ikeuna bottle, bedding it nicely in the latter’s green moss. A wisp or two of the moss he flung across the label, lying partway uppermost; but partway only, due to the careless, partial turn Baxter gave the bottle. Then he stood off and surveyed it critically.
“Some artists, eh, or artisans—which, Halse?” He gave broad wink.
Halsey looked at his watch: “Well, anything left to do now?”
“Nothing—except for me to call the Sun.” Baxter reached out to the telephone, but Halsey raised a hand.
“Not here, Artemus. Down in my room. This is my phone, thanks to a bull on the connection box downstairs. And I distrust that Orski gang. Downstairs, then. Bring the box and bottle, and shove them under my bed before you put the light on. I’ll be putting this original bottle back in my storeroom behind a ton of trunks!”
He preceded Baxter downstairs and came up seven or eight minutes later. The latter was writing on a sheet of paper laid out on his chair handle. “’Scuse my using your room for an editorial office, Halse; just batting out the lead on that taxi-spotter’s story and interview with John Yertz. I’d better call now.”
He dialed a number. He spoke: “Millie? Beautiful one? Not reporting back tonight, Millie. Tell V and P that I’ll be sending the Yertz story and the Bush Bourse murder in about midnight by an A.D.T. boy. Tell him I’m on the hottest thing yet, and I’m going to pound my ear. And Millie—get this now. If there’s any calls for me tonight—hold ’em on the board, and put ’em right through to my room. Yes, same number as always. Make a through connection. If you slip on this in any way, Millie, I’m telling you you’ll be at the employment bureau tomorrow looking for a new switchboard job.”
He hung up: “Millie never slipped in her life, but it won’t hurt to keep her on tiptoes.”
Halsey now took the phone. He dialed Prairie 89903. He heard his uncle’s voice on the wire before the completion of even the first ring.
“Hello, Uncle. Nothing to tell you of any interest whatsoever, except that Miss Brown—yes, Miss Arabella Brown—has gone out of town tonight, and won’t be back till some unknown time tomorrow. Got it?”
“Oh!” His uncle was digesting it. “That’s—that’s fine, Carr. That indicates then that that reward—”
“Yes,” Halsey hastened to interpolate, “the reward for her dachshund will have to go to the United Charities. $10 ought to keep two families a week. But Lord, Uncle, I—I hate to keep a dog in—in my room all night.” With which he hung up with alacrity.
“Good old dense well-meaning Uncle,” he said, wiping off his brow.
The newspaperman already had his plaid cap in his hand.
“Well, Halse, to bed—all of us. I’m sixteen hours in the red on sleep myself. And now you’re all fixed with the goods. If they rush you tonight, old chap, they get—paste diamonds! What a story! Sportfellow of the Morning Sun, done to death by a troupe of Jap Zouaves, an Oriental dagger plunged in his heart. Halse, we’ve got a beat in our hand.”
“More cheerful there, more cheerful,” said Halsey morosely. “Will you ring me at once on these five deuces if the department catches Hemingway?”
“I’ll not only ring you, but I’ll arise every few hours, old top, and ring the detective bureau myself. I intend to achieve a hundred dollar loan from you out of that $90,000.”
“If I ever get it,” breathed Halsey, “you—you can write your own ticket.”
He departed from Baxter at the threshold of the front door. All of the parked cars on Tower Court were gone. The Square was as deserted as an acre of sand in the middle of the Sahara desert.
“If I wear my red plaid cap tomorrow morning,” said Baxter, in a very low voice as he stepped forth from the doorway, “not this green one—it means that up to the moment I’ve left my boarding house, about 7:45 a.m., the Sherlocks haven’t nabbed Clifford X. I’m off now—and till I arrive here tomorrow morning, farewell!”
And he was gone. Halsey closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER XL
“Now You Tell One!”
Several times Carr Halsey awoke in the night. But the single immense window which looked out in the day time on that pleasant park, its upper sash down from the top tonight and locked with its cunning brass spike thrust through its frame into a socket in the lower sash, its outer stone sill a good eight feet from the ground, remained unsilhouetted by any troupe of shaven-headed Orientals ready to provide the greedy Baxter with the story of stories, much less any paunched or goatee-ed gentlemen ascending sillward via a short ladder. There fell only occasional flickering shadows on the frame of the window, as the one low street lamp down Tower Court a short distance, or the reflected illumination from the old Water Tower in the Square across the way, lightened or darkened in intensity with shiftings in the voltage of the city current supply. No sound of a stealthy key trying to turn in the lock of his door, barred against everyone tonight by its additional steel bolt, marred his half-sleep; only the hum of an occasional late motorcar, on the boulevard a short ways east, carrying its occupants home from some night club or cabaret filtered into him. His long-barrelled pigeon-shooting revolver with which he had more than once broken up 12 clay disks in 13 shots remained where it was, cool, silent and resourceful, under his pillow, and practically at his fingertips.
Nor did any ring whatsoever come on that ever-waiting phone containing the five convenient twos in its exchange number.
And eventually, on his last wakening, the light from the street lamp was gone—the red glow on the stone tower across the way had vanished—the gray misty dawn had come—and he heard the thump of four tightly rolled newspapers bang against the front door of 810½ Tower Court, and the departing clump, clump, clump of the news carrier down the street. One of those papers belonged to him.
He tiptoed forth in the hall in his pajamas, reached out into the vestibule, and rescued it.
He took it in his room and drawing down his shade to within a foot of the sill, turned on the small reading light clamped to the rear of that fourposter bed. Climbing back in, he examined its first few pages with some interest. Baxter’s John Yertz taxi-spotting story, an obvious beat, was on page one, underneath a cartoon showing about a hundred and twenty shoestring and gimcrack peddlers, the foremost ones wearing visages suspiciously like those belonging to various American trust magnates, lined up at a rickety barred gate which Mexico, bleary-eyed and beaten, with wide flopping hat, was preparing to fling open to them. In like manner, the Bush Bourse murder had been moved in to where it now properly belonged, at least with respect to chronology, for it was presented modestly on page 3. Baxter had written up everything that he might have written up had he never come to Tower Court. He had not written up a single fact, or presented a single theory, that could have emanated from his visit there. He had evidently designated what photographs should be obtained, or the city editor had used his own discretion, for there were pictures a-plenty, of the laboratory, of Proctor himself, and last but not least a 2-column enlargement of the death message found scrawled on the laboratory floor. The paper, as Halsey well knew, at least this close-in North Side edition, had gone to press at 3:30 in the morning. That meant then that the blaring of millions of radio loudspeakers to three times as many listeners in Chicagoland had produced no Clifford X. Hemingway, nor clue to him, up to that hour. The fact would have been phoned in instanter by the bureau Sun man had anything developed—and would have been incorporated in Baxter’s story by a re-write man, with a brand new lead paragraph. Nor had the close watching of all depot train gates and flying fields for the departing murderer of an unobtrusive prosaic North Side chemist, as detailed in the story in a statement by Captain Lanfrey, of the Fugitive Apprehension Division, produced a single fugitive. The late evening papers, filtering into thousands of homes and hotels and boarding-houses—had produced nothing. Nor had the countless photos, taken by countless squad cars, to countless registered hotels, rooming-houses and Y.M.C.A.’s elicited a single clue. It was beginning indeed, Halsey reflected gravely, to look as though the coming hour of 9 a.m. was more important than it had been considered at any time thus far.
Tossing the paper on the floor between the bed and the wall, he extinguished the small light and lay back on his pillow, arms under head, thinking deeply. And tired out from the half-broken sleep he had had the whole night just gone, if not the previous bumping jolting sleep in the ancient North Woods Pullman coach that had brought him down to civilization the morning before, all tension relieved now by the arrival of dawn, he dropped suddenly off. And when next he opened his eyes—day had come full blown. Beneath that nearly drawn shade, flapping gently in the morning breeze oh the lake, the grass of Tower Square carried the golden mantle of the morning sun. And the electric clock on his mantel said five minutes of 9.
Hardly had he clambered out of bed, raised his shade, put the Japanese box in full view, and splashed water on his face than, glancing obliquely southward through the window he saw a yellow Chicago Avenue street car lumber up to the crossing, and a figure step off—a figure with a cane. He recognized that slightly bent, young-old figure. It was no other than the honorable Mr. Sumiko, his visitor of nearly 24 hours before. The Jap had shown!
He watched him but a moment. He noticed that in addition to the cane, Mr. Sumiko carried a capacious but apparently light and empty, tan handbag, no doubt intended for the transportation of his property. Fair enough! Halsey turned his head hastily and looked along Tower Court in the opposite direction. A green round-nosed disc-wheeled Edselette chaseabout was in evidence, although its owner—who should be Artemus Baxter—was himself at the moment keeping somewhere out of sight. So far so good. He gave his attention again to the Jap, who was making his way slowly along the street. Finally the latter ascended the steps. The front door bell rang sharply. Halsey rose from his chair, and in the faded blue bathrobe which he had hastily donned, answered it.
“How do you do, Mr. Sumiko,” he said pleasantly. “I see you are back again on time.”
“I am, sair,” said the Jap, smiling his strangely bitter smile. “An’ I troos’ I now ’ave plasure to recover goods los’ in espress company.”
“Yes. Just step in.” Halsey led the way to his parlor room. The Japanese shipping box was now in full sight on the mantel. The face of the Oriental visitor, even in spite of its sunken eyes and its hair touched with gray, reflected the emotion of great pleasure, of exceeding satisfaction.
“By the way, Mr. Sumiko, I should like to ask you a question,” began Halsey in friendly mien. “And do sit down—no need to remain standing.” The Jap dropped into the closest chair, a straight-backed uncomfortable affair, and looked toward him politely. “You’ll pardon my appearance, won’t you? Got in very, very late this morning, and overslept.”
“You have moch night beesness per’aps?” inquired Sumiko, with more politeness, it seemed, than interest.
“Well, I had a frightfully hectic day yesterday. Er—hectic means—er—busy. For one thing, I walked into a chemical laboratory some blocks west of here, only to find a friend of mine dead. Murdered. Or I guess he was. I gave my name in as witness, and had to blow. That is, had to vamoose—go some place. See? To Evanston, in fact, where I got mixed up with friends, and thence out to a roadhouse on Kenosha Road—and this morning I’ve got a bad head on me. Feels—feels like a balloon. I’m just on my way out to tank up on black coffee—drink some, that is, and get a morning paper and read all about my friend’s death. Or maybe you’ve read the morning papers yourself and know something about it. His name was Proctor.”
“I do not r’id Englize ver’ well,” said Mr. Sumiko, gazing at him searchingly. “Shap’nese, yes—but we don’t nott hav’ Shap’nese papers in Chycago. Too ver’ bad about your fr’en’. I hope you learn moch more when you get papairs.”
“I probably shall. But what I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Sumiko—” Halsey braced himself. Now was the perfect piece of finessing. The Jap could answer—and yet have a perfect “out.” Or he could play possum—with equal facility. It would remain to be seen.
“Mr. Sumiko, yesterday you were kind enough to describe your goods over there, and thus identify yourself for all practical purposes. But the reverse side of the card you used for that purpose—so sorry that I’ve thrown it away—bore a name printed out in ink by hand, Clifford X. Hemingway.” The Jap was watching him with face as impassive as a mummy. Only the eyes showed a slight quickening in their black depths. “By a strange coincidence, that name is the name of a fellow who was in Dartmouth University—a freshman—that means a first year chap—yes—when my dead friend Proctor and I were seniors—yes, graduating.” Was the Jap reflecting now how perfectly was accounted for, although in a somewhat as yet obscure manner, to be sure, the name written on that tiled floor? Was he reflecting that his hearer was lying? Or mistaken? What? Whatever his reflections, he maintained a courteous silence. Perfect! Halsey forged grimly ahead. “I’ve often wondered what became of old Cliff Hemingway—Gad!—I never thought to ask my friend if he had ever run across him; but anyway, Cliff proceeded to pop up on your card. Where is he living now, Mr. Sumiko?”
The Jap perched his head on one side and gazed warily at Halsey. His sunken eyes burned their way into the younger man. The latter sat smiling under the tense scrutiny. “That, sair,” pronounced his visitor after a lengthy pause, “eez too bad. ‘Cleeford Hem’way’ you say name on back of card was?” He shook his head. “I am sorry to say that card was one I peeck up on steet-car seat, w’ere some one drop it. Indeed, sair, chance is strange theeng—eez she not? And to think than I shood not be able to render to you soch kin’ assistance so like as you are to me.”
