The box from japan, p.51
The Box from Japan, page 51
Halsey nodded his head. Baxter’s guess in the matter had been perfect. This wily Oriental was not divulging one single fact that might lead to the giving up of Clifford Hemingway, nor was he stupid enough to create any ponderous unsubstantiatable lies when a simple one magically solved the entire situation. As for his having picked up the card on a street-car seat, or a bus seat, or any other kind of a seat, that was entirely out of the question, as Halsey well knew; that would have been coincidence, not chance at all. But he said nothing. Except to himself, which unspoken remark consisted of: “Just for that, my fine friend, you get Tweedledee—and nothing else.”
“Too bad,” he commented briefly, at length. “But it doesn’t matter vitally. I was in hopes that I could locate the youngster. Promising chap he was.” He rose and brought over the box. “Here’s what you came for, I believe, Mr. Sumiko. Box and all. Sorry I had to even pull your cork, but after I bought it, you see, I didn’t even know about it’s being a dye. I—I half hoped I might have a bottle of good Japanese liquor! Anyway, here you are at last. Now I’ve got to be on my way down town presently to answer a lot of questions, I guess, and fill out affidavits maybe—and get myself a morning paper if I haven’t slept myself out of luck.”
The Jap’s eyes brightened appreciably. He opened the cover of the skull-box and peered inside, scraping aside a few strands of moss that partly covered the bottle. He lifted the latter very slightly with one lean yellow finger, as though either testing its heaviness, or else estimating the amount of the precious liquid that had been left with the Bush Bourse chemist. Exactly what he was trying to verify there was no telling. But a faint sigh of satisfaction did escape him. He transferred the big bottle gently, as one might a baby, to his empty satchel, hedging it down a bit with some of the moss, but leaving far more than he took. He clicked the satchel lips together, and fumbled in his back pocket. From it he withdrew a black leather wallet, full to bursting with crisp American money. He pulled from it a yellow 10-dollar bill and tendered it to Halsey. “There, sair, will you fin’ amount you hav’ pay for bottle,” he declared. “An’ I lik’ for you joos’ to kip change for tro’ble.”
Halsey fingered the ten-dollar bill undecidedly.
“The box—” he began. “Ver’ nize box if to sheep anything leequid,” said the Jap, with a wave of his hand. “Joos’ kip him—or burn him up. And do—do kip change, pliz.”
Halsey pocketed the bill with sufficient reluctance to appear genuine. “Thank you,” he said embarrassedly. “As you will.” He glanced at the clock and back to his visitor again. The Jap took up his cane, and with the grip hanging from his other hand turned to the door. Halsey hurried to precede him, opening both the room door and the outer vestibule portal. “Good day, Mr. Sumiko,” he said pleasantly to the Oriental.
The other nodded back to him on the small stome porch. “Good day, sair. My bes’ weeshes to you.” And he was feeling his way eagerly down the steps.
Once back in his room Halsey leaped to the front wall which contained his large window, and took up a position just to the north of the left window jamb, where, back flattened against the wall itself, he watched his departing visitor and the whole southward extension of the short block. The Jap proceeded to make his way laboriously toward the corner street car line. He did not once look back. At the northward end of Tower Court, as Halsey saw, with a quick glance through the pane in that direction, the Edselette chaseabout was still drawn up to the curbing, but its owner, though quite invisible, was now tinkering away at the rear of it. The Jap reached the corner just in time to board a Chicago Avenue car going west. But no sooner had he climbed up on the steep step and tendered his fare to the blue-clad conductor, than the chaseabout at the end of Tower Court became suddenly and miraculously repaired; its owner sprang into the seat, and stepped on its starting lever. In an instant the low car shot past Halsey’s window toward Chicago Avenue.
The younger man turned away with a smile of satisfaction as he noted the checks in the suit worn by the driver. “Artemus is on the job,” he commented to himself. “And with a red plaid cap to boot! No Hemingway, therefore, captured up to within an hour or so ago. Well, we may find daylight in this mystery yet.”
CHAPTER XLI
“Extry Paper! Tatrelli—”
After the departure of the Jap, followed by Baxter in his 8-cylindered revamped Edselette, Halsey threw himself back on his bed and fell to thinking of yesterday’s strange, mad procession of events. Between him and Sumiko this morning it had been checkmate—or else Sumiko had figured him for a nightclub-rounding nitwit. It did not matter. From the other side of the tightly nailed folding doors which separated his room from that of Miss Loris he could hear the nurse stirring around quietly, and he began to wonder once more what explanation would be forthcoming tonight from the dark-eyed slender girl spy, should she emerge from her attack—and the Myolpin as well—unscathed, as to what were her reasons for entering this Mazoru-Ikeuna affair. For she must be made to talk—if by no other method than the production of that heel impression. He heard Chloe let the doctor in; recognized the kindly modulations of the latter’s voice. The medical man remained but a moment or two—gave, apparently, a few casual instructions—and departed.
Halsey, however, stayed put exactly where he was. A dollar bill to Chloe, and she smuggled him up a slice of bread and currant jelly, and a pot of tea—coffee was becoming too dangerous in this place where Mrs. Morely went sniffing about the halls. And close upon ten o’clock the telephone bell rang. He knew instinctively, even before he raised the receiver, that the calling party was going to be Artemus Baxter.
“Is this Tower toot-toot-toot-toot—oh hell, is this Carr Halsey?”
“Speaking,” replied the younger man hurriedly.
“Artemus,” said the other. “Wait’ll I get my tongue untied. All right now. Well, I’m speaking from the telephone booth of a roadhouse ’way out beyond the western city limits. I’ve found where our man hangs out—and now I’ve got some work for you to do. Lizette has developed gastritis or something, and I’ve had to put her up for the day. Are you there?”
“Yes, yes. Go on, Artemus.”
“Well, here’s the low-down on it. I kept the Jap in sight without any trouble at all. He transferred to a southbound Halsted Street car at the viaduct where Chicago Avenue runs over the old Chicago and Northwestern Railroad tracks—Trunk Line 11, I guess they call it now. Anyway, he stuck to Halsted as far as 22nd Street, and there changed cars again. He kept on going west, and this time he stayed on all the way to Kedvale Avenue—the weeds, I call it!—where a small interurban street-car platform sits in the middle of the street with benches for people waiting to perigrate to Riverside and points west. A motorcycle policeman hopped on my tail once—somewhere around California Avenue, I think—but old pink police card D-43, plus the reporter’s badge, plus a quick dollar for a cigar sent him about his business. The Jap, as I said, dismounted at the point I’ve mentioned, and reclined his weary frame on a long interurban bench. A big heavy LaGrange car was just coming in from the west, and there was no telling how soon it would start back on the homeward trek. Lizette, about this time, had begun to run a slight fever and show signs of chills, with a bit of a bronchial cough—so I put her to bed immedjit. That is, I shot her into a two-by-four public garage forty feet or so off the interurban platform corner, and became footloose and fancy free. So footloose, in fact, that ’twas I who swung on the back steps of that departing LaGrange juggernaut as it pulled out a few minutes later for its cross-country run.
“I dropped into a rear seat, and kept my eyes on the back of Meestair Sumiko’s neck, while Chicago thinned rapidly out and became rural America. The car was fair-to-middlin’ full; so I wasn’t worried about Sumiko’s getting next to the fact that he was being shadowed, perhaps by police! Although, too, Halse, I got a faint impression, somehow, that he didn’t care in the least! Isn’t that odd? Well anyway, the car shot across fields and culverts for a ways and finally stopped for a moment at the town of Riverside. A few commuters piled off here, but the Jap stuck tight. Car started off, and we were in the country again. Soon we crossed the Desplaines River. A few minutes later he got up suddenly and pressed the button. The car slowed up. It was right out in the wilds, Halse, where a wide road of crushed stone cut squarely across the suburban tracks, and there was nothing in sight but a dinky little waiting platform with one double-barreled seat and a leaky roof maintaining a solitary vigil over the crickets and cows.
“The Jap got off by his lonesome and as the car started off again ’cross-country toward LaGrange I could see him starting northward along the crushed stone road. The minute the car got round a bend, however, and was concealed by a stretch of woods, I pressed the button as quickly as I could, telling the conductor I had made a mistake—that I should have got off at the last crossroad.
“He let me off right there in the woods, and I sprinted back along the right of way, reaching the dinky little waiting platform just in time to see the Jap turn off the main road a quarter mile to the north and disappear.
“Down the road I went, till I found the exact intersection where he had turned off. It was an old battered-up road—a private road, Halse—badly out of repair and bearing newly made tracks of a heavy automobile. An old faded signboard nailed to a fencepost said: ‘Keegan’s Road—Private.’ So I went no farther from that point. There seemed to be a lot of truck farms around that region, and I soon spotted an old Dutch farmer in a long blue smock weeding carrots over in a field. I beat it over to him and quizzed him. I saw he was wearing wooden shoes, and I knew I would get just so far—and no further. And so far as I did get, I found out some puzzling facts. Here they are.” Baxter paused for breath. “Are you still on the wire, Halse?”
“Drinking it all in,” replied Halsey quickly, “And what are the facts?”
“This Jap,” declared Baxter, “has been living on the old Keegan farm, situated back of several heavy groves of trees at the farther end of this private road. And Keegan, likewise, was the one-time owner of the old Harlem Dog Track, some mile or more to the north. The Jap, according to the old truck farmer’s belief, is a servant of the man who rents the Keegan farm, but the Dutchman also admits that he’s seen him only during the last few weeks or so. So if this is really the case, Halse, it would appear that our man is working for someone higher up. All right for that, however. I couldn’t go snooping further along Keenan Road in daylight for fear of crabbing our game, but I got enough information out of the Dutchman for us to call a halt on this end. In fact, the old wooden-shoed oaf began to evince more suspicion as to who I was, than I myself had interest in the Jap—so I had to pretend to be a subdivision man—a land scout—and concentrated all my questions on ownerships, titles, tenancies—and lay off questions about personal descriptions or personal facts concerning people themselves. But I got enough information, as I say, to start you out on your end. Here it is—and now for your work.
“The old Keegan farm has been rented for over a year by a wealthy downtown Chicago business man, somewhere in Old Loop—a man named Carleton McCollum. I don’t know whether he’s young, old, or middle-aged, married or single. The Dutchman had me on the run, I tell you. But McCollum is a man who evidently prefers country life to city life, for he makes the trip to and from the city every day in his automobile. It’s a blue Packingson-12, upholstered in tan. Nice car. They sell for about $4000. He has a splendid big open field, it appears, outside his house from which he could take off daily, if he wanted to, in a suburbanites’ doodle-bug safety plane, but he doesn’t go in for the flying stuff. Hard roads and pneumatic tires are enough for him, it seems. That puts him out of his 20’s or 30’s, I’d say. Now, Halse, I’m starting back to the city by streetcar—the slow and painful method! There isn’t a Chicago phone directory in this fool place—only the suburban volume. That one, at least, doesn’t list him. So suppose you look in your Chicago phone directory for the name ‘Carleton McCollum,’ or, if it’s not there, get a line on him simply through the business and professional registrations at the Chamber of Commerce, make a quick sneak downtown and find out just where his offices are and what sort of business he’s in. Then be back at your rooms in time to meet me, at which time we’ll discuss what’s to be done next. O.K., is it?”
“I’ll investigate at once,” Halsey told the older man. “I’ll have all the information by the time you get back to my room. If I’m not back, bamboozle yourself inside and wait for me. So Carleton McCollum is the name, eh? All right. Good-by.” And he hung up, his brows contracted in a puzzled frown.
Still sitting on the chair next his telephone table he raised the Brobdingnagian directory of Chicago, London of the West, to his knees and turned hurriedly to the Mc’s. Shortly he found what he was searching for, but the information was, of course, most meager. The entry read simply:
McCollum—Carleton G. 37 W. Van Buren
Street. Wabash 83336.
Having dressed in the meantime, he was out of the house a moment later and starting for Old Loop on the subway.
And under the shadows of the thundering Van Buren Street one-tier L-road, he found No. 37. Somewhat to his surprise, for he expected to see one of the ultra-modern office skyscrapers, No. 37 turned out to be no other than the huge Old Colony Building, one of the grander structures of old Chicago that had been meticulously kept up during the last ten years’ progress of re-building. A consultation of the black-and-white bulletin board in the gloomy foyer told him that the offices of Carleton McCollum were at Room 942; so he at once took the elevator to the ninth floor. The elevator was, in fact, a local car, going to that stratum only of the Old Colony Building. A khaki-clad telegraph boy with very noticeable freckles and bright red hair, about sixteen years old, got out of the car with him. Or at least partway out. For a sprite of a girl, no more than 15½ years of age herself, with pipestem legs and brown mane that, curling charmingly upward at its ends, tumbled juvenilely nearly to her shoulders, was getting on. Girl and telegraph boy evidently recognized each other, and moreover, were connected with Halsey’s very objective, for their opening colloquy on the very threshold of the waiting car held in it the spoken name of McCollum, and he stooped immediately and tightened his shoelace as he listened to it.
“Hullo, Gracie. Wire f’r Mister McCollum. ’S he in?”
“Nope, Tommie. Me an’ the boss has knocked off for the day. So they ain’t nobody in, see? He come in ’bout nine, read his mail, writ a few conf’dential letters on his machine an’ blew for the day, jus’ a half hour ago. He gi’ me th’ rest o’ the mornin’ an’ all the afta’noon off. Aincha jelly, that you gotta work? Bring th’ wire back in the mornin’, will you, Tommy?”
“Oke, baby. I’d do anything f’r yu! I’d—”
“Get aboard here, you two,” roared the operator, as one would do who was addressing mere irresponsible infants, “an’ quit holdin’ th’ car!”
And with a clank of the gates, girl, A.D.T. boy, and operator all sank out of sight.
Halsey straightened up from his shoelace. This, at least, simplified matters a bit for plain corridor sleuthing, but made more intensive investigations—such as, for instance, might be executed by an individual exactly resembling himself inquiring within the confines of Suite 942 for a mythical Mr. Jones, a former tenant of the offices now occupied by a Mr. C. McCollum!—not possible today. He made his way hopefully, nevertheless, along the somber corridor. McCollum picked his office girls exceeding young, it seemed; and Halsey, from some subconscious impression still lingering within him from his remembrance of that naive youngster who had just stepped into the car, could not help but feel somehow that McCollum picked them unobservant and quite unanalytical as well! What sort of business was he in, anyway, where he stooped so low commercially as writing his own letters, at least at times, on a machine of his own! That infant back there probably couldn’t spell half the words used in an ordinary letter. And thus he was still pondering when he reached the offices. But he pondered no further, for the inscription painted on the ground glass panel of the door of 942 not only explained the necessity of a considerable degree of extremely confidential correspondence on the part of its tenant, but was so long in itself that Halsey’s mental energies were entirely absorbed in reading it from its first word clear to its last. One more look—one more complete reading of the business proclamation painted there—and with a low whistle of perplexity and surprise, he turned on his heel and made his way slowly back to the elevator shaft. For the words on the door of Room 942 announced:
CARLETON G. McCOLLUM
Inventions Promoted
Capital Furnished.
Special attention to Military, Naval, Aero-
nautical and Radio-Communication Devices.
(Sales contacts negotiated between inventors and patent-holders with representatives and agents for all Foreign Powers.)
Going down in the cage, Halsey’s mind was beset with a thousand suggestions. For the first time there was beginning to filter in on his consciousness that he and Artemus Baxter had stumbled headlong into something of national, vital importance; yet something from whose developments thus far he was unable to formulate any adequate explanation.
And he was still putting two and two together to make a hopeless four, when he reached the street. People, for some reason, were buying papers briskly from the corner newsstand at Van Buren and Dearborn Streets. Indeed, the newsboy could hardly pass them out quickly enough. Halsey walked over and surveyed the headlines. It was an extra. The shrieking line and its sub-lines read:
