The box from japan, p.72
The Box from Japan, page 72
“Gosh all hemlock!” snorted Halsey. “Masquerade suits—$2 per night! Say, that Spanish cook was just a Mexican peon, who caught something—well—not so nice tonight. I’ll bet one of the courses he served your brother were frijoles. And the Chinese servant was a Jap—God knows who. Somebody who’s joined McCollum in the last month or so. A staged drama, all of it—to impress your brother with his international connections—because he thought your brother was just a callow youth.”
“Goodness, Carr, you—you know more about that dinner, I guess, than Cliff himself knew! Well, at any rate Mr. McCollum was very impressive. He showed Cliff an experimental laboratory he had, in which the opposite faces of all its walls, ceiling and floor—I mean, by that, the faces which lay in the adjoining rooms—carried experimenters’ radio-wave block screens, so that he could verify and try out radio and television inventions submitted to him—”
“Radio-wave block screens which were there just in case of examination of his premises,” Halsey ejaculated. “But they weren’t connected up with each other tonight, I’ll jolly well say. They—and I suppose he was right then developing or trying out somebody’s invention—somebody who had entrusted him with some vital secret—as he wanted your brother to do?”
She nodded: “Exactly. Cliff, of course, had refused utterly to trust him with his formula, as McCollum had first had the—the—the gall to ask. He was very grumpy, and told Cliff that one inventor had trusted him implicitly with an unpatented scheme to televise in two directions at the same time over the same wave. He—”
“Say,” Halsey bit out belligerently, “I’ll bet he had another client who had trusted him with some device for sending a balloon into the air?”
“Not exactly,” she said wonderingly. “But he showed Cliff some partial papers of proposed patenting wherein a client had devised a way to send up a balloon, and by some kind of pulsations from a dynamo or something, create a rainfall in a half hour.”
Halsey shook his head helplessly. “Beautifully protected at every angle,” he commented. “Why—that fellow couldn’t hardly be caught unless caught in the actual act. Well, we caught him tonight, all right, all right. We—but go on, Loris. Tell me—about your brother?”
“Well, Cliff never went out there again. He was afraid. He felt somehow, he wrote, that he had only gotten away because he agreed, at last, to sell the secret for $25,000 cash. He reneged after he got away, of course. He never accepted any more invitations to go out to Keegan’s Road again. He had told McCollum, when he first went to him, that he was living in the Y.M.C.A.—he really wasn’t, Carr—and now he felt reasonably safe, in a way, so long as he didn’t get out—well—in the wilds.” She paused. “Now, however, McCollum changed his tack again. He now said he had another power—a big European Power this time—he would pay the entire price asked. But that the agent must have a generous sample of the sugar explosive first. Cliff, of course, would not render it. Had it been analyzed, it would have given a clue to his process, at least, by subtraction of its formula from the formula for sugar. There would have been only the catalytic agent, then, possibly, to guess at. So McCollum asked him to go out on the edge of the Forest Preserve—you have something like that here in Chicago, haven’t you?—and try some experiments at shooting off the stuff, in front of a representative for the agent of this Power. Cliff did so, but he hired a big tramp on the Lake Front to go with him, and stand out nearby on the road—and then it was two—against two! And a witness in the bargain! The agent’s representative was, by the way, a swarthy man like a Spaniard or a Turk—so Cliff said. They discussed the process together. And while they were doing it, McCollum tried covertly to steal one of the bullets behind Cliff’s back. When that failed, he tried to get hold of one of the empty shells, containing some of the burned explosive. That, too, would have been bad—for the burned stuff would have contained the atomic combination which would have at least indicated what acid had been used. Also, Cliff was certain he saw two men hovering back in the woods, not far from where they were experimenting ballistically. He told McCollum that day that he would come to his office next day—and would deliver the formula, and samples of it, if the money was put on the desk in the form of the left halves of 250 thousand-dollar bills, the right halves to be furnished after the formula had been proved up to the satisfaction of the buying parties. He didn’t go there next day, though! He was 100-percent convinced now, he said, that McCollum was a trickster. And his experience out in your Forest Preserves had convinced him, he wrote, that had he gone to the other’s office, he would have received counterfeit money or been otherwise bilked, or kidnapped, or God knows what.”
She paused.
“But in the meantime, so he wrote me, he had in view another man now who had a lot of affiliations in the chemical industry—a young chemist who had been out to Madison one afternoon, and who had dropped into the University chemical laboratory to look casually over it, and who had chatted with him at one of the working sites. This man’s name was Wendell Proctor. Cliff had already, in fact, dropped in to see this Proctor, in Chicago, several times, and from the way the chemist talked of his affairs Cliff believed that he had some capital of his own—enough maybe, Cliff thought, to equip a small factory and commence manufacturing Hemingite on a modest scale.”
“Wendell Proctor,” Halsey informed her, looking down at the bedspread instead of at her, for it was more than evident that she knew nothing of the ugly thing which had occurred the second day previous during mid-afternoon in Bush Bourse, “was one of my best friends. And that is exactly why I am entering your tangle. And you—mine! That is—that, and other things. But go ahead.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. The very naiveté of her gaze rendered it plain that she knew nothing.
“Well,” she went on, after a moment’s apparent reflection on his last words, “that letter in which Cliff both spoke of Proctor and of his disgust and suspicions of Carleton McCollum was the last I ever received from him. I wrote to him several times after that—and, by the way, now that he was in Chicago and no longer had the Post Office box under the name ‘Mark Ellings,’ I always dropped my letters to him in the slot of the mail-car that goes by Eden just before midnight. Well, my letters did not come back—nor were they answered. He was living out on Douglas Park—as he called it—with a ridiculous pair of illiterate deaf mutes from the Kentucky hills, named Mr. and Mrs. Cal Clump.”
“Deaf mutes?” inquired Halsey, contracting his brows together. “And illiterate?”
She nodded. “Yes. He told me all about them. Curious people. They could neither read nor write. They had inherited three thousand dollars somewhere in the hills of Kentucky, and had come to Chicago to spend it all. Mr. Cal Clump chewed tobacco—Mrs. Cal smoked a pipe! Both of them talked only on their fingers. Cut off from the world as they were, and unable to read books or anything else for that matter, they played, more or less continuously, with greasy playing cards, a game which Cliff finally found out was called Sooey Sooey Old Cat. He had seen their glowing advertisement of a nice room to rent cheap, when he first struck Chicago and had gone out there to see it. But the ad, you see, had been written entirely by a newspaper advertisement solicitor, and he had a hard time even to let them know he would take the room—and they had to give him the price of it on their fingers.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Halsey. “Then these folks didn’t even take a newspaper—since they couldn’t read it? And didn’t have a radio—since they couldn’t hear it? In which case they—they would neither have seen nor heard the publicity nor the broadc—” He stopped short.
She was looking at him again with that troubled look.
“What—what publicity?” she said distressedly. “And what—what broadcasting?”
CHAPTER LVIII
The Card That Traveled in a Circle
He regarded her troubledly in turn. He wondered what she was going to say—when she should learn a lot of things she did not know. Then he spoke:
“Well—you know—you know I spoke about needing—your brother’s stock?”
“Oh—I see!” she said, relieved. “And you’ve been trying to get in touch with him through personal ads in the papers about the stock? Yes, I see.” She smiled. And was silent a moment. Then she went on.
“Well, as to the Clumps having no radio—that is something that would have pleased Cliff greatly. In fact, as I recall it, that was one reason why he took the room. He has, as I have said, a ‘blind spot’ for music. Music actually pains him. He dislikes intensely the continual influx of music that is always pouring in on other people’s radios. He—but I was speaking about the Clumps.”
“Yes,” echoed Halsey. “The Clumps! What on earth did these two illiterates from Kentucky do to amuse themselves, outside of playing Sooey Sooey Old Cat?”
“Well, for one thing,” she said, “Cliff wrote me that they had rented about a thousand reels of old tattered movie film—you know—the old-time silent films. They had a dilapidated projection machine, and gave themselves long picture shows every night—sometimes matinees, too!—and cooking great kettles of what Cliff called ‘percabbage an’ streaker meat,’ while they hilariously guffawed at Charlie Chaplin and wept copiously, both of them, at the affairs of a little tiny-tot actor called Jackie Coogan who, so I read recently, just had his fifth child born to him last month. And they—I’m speaking of the Clumps again!—moonshined a bit in the bargain too, using corn, so as to have plenty of liquor for themselves to drink.”
“Golly—having a swell time in Chicago, weren’t they?” said Halsey, amusedly shaking his head. “But those last letters of yours to—to Clifford? Did they come back to you?”
“Not at first,” the girl replied. “They remained unanswered, and then suddenly they all came back in a bunch. I was helping old Daddy Acres, our postmaster, by unpacking the mail bag and distributing the mail into the Post Office boxes that day in Eden—otherwise he might have seen the returned letters and figured that I had a new sweetheart named—named Clifford Hemingway, and it might have gone all over the town. But as it was, the bunch of letters, tied up together, came back—into my own hands only. All the letters had just the illiterate word ‘Gon’ written on them in pencil, and as near as I could figure it, it meant ‘Gone.’ But where had he gone? That was the question.
“That was about ten days ago. I waited a few more days. Still no letter from my brother. Now I did begin to wonder seriously if something had happened to him. So I wrote to this McCollum myself—and so that he would bc able to answer me in that small town under the name Loris Hangless, I had, much as I disliked to resort to such subterfuges, to say that that was my married name. I asked for any news or information about my brother, Clifford Hemingway, who, I told him, I understood had been negotiating with him about a chemical process. I addressed the letter plainly, requesting the Chicago Post Office to use directory service and to return it in three days if the addressee were not located. The letter did not come back, though; and neither did I receive any answer whatever from the man McCollum. He must have been, as I figure it now, very angry. I wrote again—and again no reply. Sulking still, as I figure now. And then, thinking of that secret process that Cliff and Cliff alone knew, I commenced to realize for the first time in my life that his fears about possible forcible detention or kidnapping—of even being killed in cold blood—might be well founded. It had never struck me in that light before, as it apparently had him. And so I decided to come up to Chicago and try and locate Clifford myself.”
“You arrived,” put in Halsey, “and visited McCollum’s offices, I suppose, as soon as business hours opened. What, exactly—what did he tell you?”
“Well,” the girl replied, “I left Eden just shortly before midnight Tuesday—the only possible train connections, you see—and did not get into Chicago yesterday till 9:30 in the morning; so I could not exactly visit McCollum’s offices at the very beginning of business hours. But I got there at 10 o’clock—or a few minutes after—for to tell you the truth, Carr, I haven’t got money to pay for taxicabs—and so I had to take street cars from your gigantic passenger station on Randolph Street to the Old Colony Building. But even though it was after 10, he was not down yet. There was only a little office girl—a tiny innocent-looking little thing—who appeared to answer the phone and take care of visitors. He had a sort of suite of rooms, with an inside private office for himself, and an outside anteroom for any caller to sit in; the office girl sat there, too, at her little desk. I remained a brief while, and, since he still didn’t show up, I wrote out my brother’s name, Clifford X. Hemingway, on a blank calling card that I took from my purse—naturally I didn’t bring any of Clifford’s old printed cards with the name John Hangless III on them; I just had to make one on the spot, with my fountain pen—and gave it to the girl, telling her to hand it to Mr. McCollum when he came in and tell him that the sister of the party whose name was written on the card was in the city and wanted to know the whereabouts of her brother at once, and anything whatever he could tell her about him. I told her I would probably be at the Y.W.C.A., under the name under which I had written him—but if not, would ’phone in my address. Then I left the Old Colony Building.” She paused, and stared puzzledly, bewilderedly at him. “And that very same card—”
“Yes, I know,” he admitted grimly. “That card was the same one I dropped on the floor when I rented you this room here and was fumbling for something to write you out a receipt on. In a few minutes I’ll explain all that. At least why I had it. It must look to you very much as though I’m mixed up with Carleton McCollum myself. But such isn’t the case, at that.” He paused. “But let me hear the rest of your story first.”
“Well,” she went on, “after I left the Old Colony Building I decided naturally next to go to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cal Clump. As I said before, I didn’t have so much money that I could go taxi traveling; so I took a street car that was pointed out to me as the proper car to take to get to Carlisle Place, where Clifford had lived. If I had been properly instructed, as I learned afterward, I would have taken a—a Douglas Park elevated train, and gotten there much sooner. However, I found the place where the Clumps resided. A cute modern bungalow, set in a row of cottages. They were playing, as you might imagine—at least I guess they were—Sooey Sooey Old Cat, and Mr. Clump evidently didn’t trust Mrs. Clump, for he brought all his cards to the door stuck in various pockets of his hickory shirt, and I think he was cheating her a bit, as well, for I saw one protruding ever so slightly from the top of his high rawhide boots. But it proved almost hopeless to try and get any information. Being unable to read a note I wrote them, and unable to hear, as well, they were cut apart from me a thousand miles. At length after much gesticulation on both sides, Mr. Clump pointed madly at an urchin playing far down the street, a block or so, and made motions for me to bring him. I went and accosted the boy. Asked him who he was. After a number of adroit questions, I found that he had been, some time back, a little deaf-and-dumb boy who had gone to the deaf-mute school and had learned to talk on his fingers. But he had been dumb only—not deaf—and his dumbness had been corrected, a year ago, by an operation. He said he knew ‘them there Clumps’ and charged 10 cents for translating. So I gave him a dime, and he trotted back to Mr. Clump’s place with me.
“By dint of much talking on my part, and much finger work on the little lad’s part, I finally elicited the fact that my brother had, indeed, left them a little over 2 weeks before; they had simply found his few clothes and his small portable radio, packed and gone, and his key on the bureau, while they were down at your famous Whaleorium—at least that’s what the boy called it—in Grant Park, looking at the collection of living whales. They—Carr, have you really got such a thing here in Chicago?”
“Yes indeed,” he told her. “It’s known, though, as the Aquamammalorium—and not exactly what the little boy called it. It was built, so far as I recall it, sometime in 1938, and one of our ex-presidents, a man named Herbert Hoover, is the superintendent and managing director of it—a more or less honorary position, to some extent. There are over thirty different species of whales in it—all in a single gigantic steel-braced glass tank—the goose-beaked whale—the porpoise whale—the arctic whale, and so on. When they all start flopping on the same day, it makes a roar and a din so great that you can hear it far over in Old Loop. In fact, a prominent lawyer in Old Loop, by name J. Ivings Pierce, actually sued to abolish the Aquamammalorium on the plea that the hubbub made at times by the whales rendered the establishment a public nuisance, but lost the suit because the superintendent, this Hoover, testified that he himself, personally, could not hear any of the uproar. And so we have our Aquamammalorium today. And—but go on with your story. We’re getting off the track. So Mr. and Mrs. Clump had been down at the Aquamammalorium on the day that Clifford’s clothes and all had been moved out?”
