The box from japan, p.75
The Box from Japan, page 75
“Anyway,” he commented, “I’m glad that I live in the Flying ’40’s, even if I don’t personally belong to ’em.”
“I don’t think you will be,” she warned, “when Mrs. Morely tells you all she’s got laid out—to tell you.” She cuddled down in the pillow, her hand under her head. “Well, darlin’, I wish you luck—but don’t forget to lease one of those new apartments—quick.”
“I won’t,” he promised. And as he spoke, Miss Kinneally, somewhat perspicaciously, it seemed, rattled the doorknob audibly a moment, and then entered the room, blinking her eyes at the light.
“Well, that sleep made a new person out of me,” she said. “And I do hope that you two weren’t bored to death,” she added.
“Not at all,” the two younger occupants of the room both said in unison. At which she looked a bit startled. Halsey waved his fingertips at the girl in the bed. “Good night, Miss Kinneally,” he told the older woman. And he made his exit as quickly as possible, to try to begin to realize this strange new development in his life.
He went to his room, and undressing, automaton-like, turned back his bedclothes and got into his pajamas. But hardly had he buttoned the neck of those brightly striped garments halfway up, than his phone rang sharply. He sprang to it. Baxter, of course. No one else would ever be calling him at this hour. But Baxter it was not! It was his uncle, Roger Halsey.
“For Heaven’s sake, Carr,” the older man began, “I’ve tried a number of times to get you tonight. Where have you been?”
“Following up that Jap lead,” said the younger man cautiously.
“Anything—anything productive?” his uncle asked hastily.
“Nothing so far yet—with respect to our problem,” replied Halsey quite definitely. “What’s up—anything?”
“Yes. Bad news, Carr. A former janitor of mine here—his name is Olaf Jensen—has a son who’s a runner-boy down at the detective bureau. The boy, Jens Jensen, runs with messages and papers back and forth from one department to another, one floor to another. You know what a giant honeycomb the bureau is? Well, the boy was in Captain Duffy’s office tonight with a sheaf of papers—waiting for a signature or something—and caught part of a conversation between Duffy and another man—the man was undoubtedly Levenson, from the description given to me later—and, hearing my name, the boy listened as well as he could and got all he could. The minute he got off duty, he told his father. And his father came over to my place at once and handed it on to me. Carr, the bureau—Duffy himself—is all fixed to turn Hemingway over to Levenson and the Ajax outfit—and not us at all—the minute he’s found and they get done with him.”
“The devil you say? That’s bad. Baxter wasn’t sitting so solid down there as he thought.”
“No. But—wait—that isn’t all. They—Ajax—are playing every avenue now, with hard money, by which Hemingway may be turned up. Every newspaper tomorrow morning will have a paid advertisement in which they will come out flatfooted, offering $2000 this time for information which leads to the capture of Hemingway—after he is convicted of being the murderer. That’s Levenson’s cautious hand, see? The public now regards Hemingway conclusively as the Bush Bourse killer—and so Levenson hopes to make the public work just as hard—and yet perhaps not have to pay the reward money. He can’t bunk the police on that equivocation, however. The offer with them is cut and dried. Hemingway, killer or not. But wait, There’s more. Every city editor in town—yours, as well, Carr—has had a signed offer presented him of $2000 bonus money to split between himself and any of his reporters who locate Clifford Hemingway, providing the Ajax Company officials may see the man at the same time the reporters are getting Hemingway’s story. You know how it is—how newspapers, to scoop each other, often sequester their man a while when they locate him—and get his life history in the bargain. In the case of the Press—the offer is $2000 out-and-out bonus money for first interview by Ajax with Clifford Hemingway—available to reporters, sob sisters, and editors only. The actual cash, Carr, for all the rewards and bonuses, including some cash that is to go to Duffy, has been put in escrow with the Bernstein-Siegel Day and Night Bank in Old Loop, so that the signed offers won’t look like so much paper. The reason the boy was able to overhear all this was because Levenson was explaining to Duffy that none of these newspaper bonuses, or rewards, in any way nullified the secret arrangement with him, Duffy.”
“Jehosephat, Uncle. That Levenson is a swift operator, I’ll say. I’m damn sorry that Orski ever had his fool legs cut off. He’s an older man, and would probably have been much slower on the trigger himself.” Halsey was silent. “Well, all this is not so good, Uncle, I’ll admit. Looks now as though it’s you, and I, and Baxter—oh he’s with us, don’t worry—against all the city editors, the public, and the police department now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. And what a chance we’ve got!”
“Well, Uncle, I don’t know what I can do. It’s nearly three in the morning. Now if ever, damn it, I need that 90,000 bucks. And how I need it! Because I—but I won’t bother you with the reason why. All I can do now is to wait—on Baxter. He’s close to something—that may eventuate in something. Or which may give us a new lead or two. He’s to phone me immediately—if he gets a single millimeter closer to—to our objective.”
“Well all I can say is that if he can deliver the goods—to us, that is, not Ajax—I’ll insist on paying him $2000 bonus myself, out of my own killing on that Zell sale. Lord, Carr, with my 27 percent stock, I stand to pull down a terrific pot of money—more than I’ll ever be able to spend for the rest of my days. I—well—be sure and let Baxter know now, in case Levenson’s newspaper offer, and its cash backing, reaches his ears.”
“All right. I will. He could probably use $2000—to buy more pipes with.” Carr Halsey paused, undecidedly. “Well, as I say, he’s to phone me if he gets even within shouting distance of the information we need.”
“Very well, Carr,” the older man said wearily. “I’m worn out, though. I’m—I’m sick of it all.”
“Buck up. Everything comes to an end, one way or the other.”
And they said good-by.
“Damn the Ajax gang!” said Halsey morosely to himself, as he deposited the phone instrument back in its cradle. “Money certainly talks. Especially when it’s put right up in a day-and-night bank! And us—us!—the whole crowd of us—flatter than a pancake.”
He pondered a moment, troubledly, deeply, wondering where on earth in that great beehive, Federal headquarters, he could reach Baxter; and then he decided on the spot that Baxter was not one to doubledeal a friend, especially knowing the gravity of the situation. So he turned out the lights gloomily, and dropped into bed, unknowing that sooner than he thought he would have a chance of relaying his uncle’s undecisive offer on to Baxter himself. For hardly had he pulled the covers up over him, and his thoughts began to tear themselves bodily away from the never-ending exasperating problem threatening the only patrimony he might ever hope to own, to that pleasanter delightful new thing that had come into his life, that charming delicate girl who lay in the adjoining room and for whom he would like to have purchased $90,000 worth of silks, furs, gowns, motor cars and European trips, than a machine of some sort grated stridently against the curbing outside, an automobile door rattled open, and a few seconds later the doorbell of No. 810½ rang sharply. He was climbing out of bed even as it reverberated in his ears; but Miss Kinneally evidently heard it, for she was already answering it. He heard her ushering somebody—several persons, obviously—in, and even as he groped for his light switch, an authoritative knock sounded on the panels of his door. He gave up looking for the lights, and stumbled across the dark room, and, opening the door, peered out. Miss Kinneally had already gone back to her charge. There, under the lone night bulb of the front hall, stood two men, gleaming badges peeping from exposed vests, and one of them in a faultlessly cut suit holding in his hand a sealed envelope.
“Mr. Halsey,” he said, “Kenyon is my name. From Federal headquarters, downtown. Agent. This is Mr. Rice, also one of our agents. I have a note here from a friend of yours, Artemus Baxter, directing you to give over to us a bottle of some sort.”
“Come in, please.” Halsey let them in, found the lights at last, and flung a brown silk dressing gown loosely over himself. Cords of the dressing gown trailing loosely on the floor, he read the note completely, by the overhanging light. It was typewritten, but if he had had any idea or disquieting suspicions that it was a trick of some sort, he divested himself of such an idea immediately, for the phraseology was unmistakably Baxterian, and the handwriting in the signature the freakish chirography of Artemus Baxter himself, the ‘t’s looking exactly like ‘x’s, and the ‘e’s being Greek deltas so queerly made that they looked almost like the ‘t’s should have looked! The communication ran:
DEAR HALSE:
Give these two little lads the bottle of Mazoru-Ikeuna. Don’t bore them with any tales about it, as they’re just Uncle Sam’s errand boys for the moment. The secret is out at last. McCollum finally squawked, first in condensed synopsis form, and now he’s giving the fully embellished tale. We didn’t get even the preliminary synopsis, though, until he learned two things: that the Mazoru-Ikeuna was in existence, and could be gotten down here, and that a representative of the Hearst News Service would be present. That’s where we’re pulling a fast one on him, for Operator Joe Glozer is posing as the managing editor of the Herald-Examiner, our honorable Hearst newspaper here—you know Glozer used to work as a leg-man for the Herald-Ex, and has his original Herald-Ex identification folder. The lad’s an actor, too, no foolin’. And the real managing ed, Charles S. Stanton, will be red-headed if it ever gets to his ears, God bress de-kin’ gemmun! The Jap’s in another room and, I understand, hearing that McCollum is doing the Grand Sing, has announced his willingness to do the same—and, in fact, is clamoring for a megaphone and a place in line in front of our one very busy steno. I’m sorry to say, however, that I’ve nothing so far to send you on your Hemingway problem. I am right on the inside of everything down here—and I’m telling you there are durn few who are on the inside, too!—but, howin’ell could I help but be, considering that I was in on that grand finalé tonight, and that I know Inspector-General Oliver Hagman, who’s conducting this investigation, like I know my own brother, if I had one! Well, I’ll be over to your diggings when it’s all complete—probably some time in the morning, I judge—and give you the whole story, as much as there is. Wait for me, without fail. Just now I’ve got to see the whole thing out—but it looks, Halse, as though hardly a part of the whole thing can ever see print. Gosh, ain’t ’at fierce?
Artemus Baxter.
P. S.: By the way, before my particular section of the Federal Express pulled away from the Keegan farm tonight—you were already heading then, you know, for Central Air Field in the gyro, with the sky-jumping bunch—I stepped into McCollum’s radio chamber and just plucked off that highly-colored chart that was pinned to his television screen. When we reached the Federal Building, I sort of had a hunch that this story might, for Mr. Artemus Baxter, turn into one of those gentlemanly forcible detention affairs like the Saigen counterfeiting case in which it was ‘Oh, Mr. Baxter, you must stay a while—don’t bother to meet your deadline tomorrow morning!’ In fact, it looked to me as though I had a tutelary guardian at my elbow right then. Well, I had a stamped envelope in my pocket, and while my guardian stuck close, I just stepped into the letter registering room on the main floor—the Post Office part of the building—folded the chart in several directions, sealed it up in the envelope with red wax, addressed it to you, and dropped it in the collection window in the middle foyer. I had a sort of hunch that that was the only way I could ever insure having it, so as to run it on our color-page 3 of the Sun—that is, if it could be reproduced at all by the three-screen 60-line Ben Day process. Then we went on upstairs to the Federal Bureau. Now, however, Halse, it looks as though the whole story is Federal sacred-cow. You’ll get that letter, however, in the morning, and I suggest, for the time being, that you leave it unopened with the midnight postmark on it so we’ll have some sort of record or proof that it’s been safe and secluded from vulgar gaze all the while. I’ll explain later.
P. P. S.: By the way, the Jap seems to be entirely in the clear so far as any complicity in that Proctor murder goes. Claims to be able to prove by several people, including the proprietress herself, that he was in Mrs. Tuchawara’s Japanese tea-shop on Blue Island Avenue near Halsted last Wednesday from half-past two to half-past three. But what is most important, none of the prints from his saffron fingers tally in any way with those on the pestle handle, for Inspector General Hagman has sent over to the Municipal Crime Lab for an enlarged set of the prints in the Proctor murder. The Jap, my boy, is out! Wasn’t even an accomplice to it, evidently.
P. P. P. S.: Who did kill Proctor then, you ask? Well, sez I, McCollum indubitably and unquestionably done the dirty deed, judging from the facts we already know. For his finger prints tally exactly with one of the two sets on the handle. But the Mexican-German swine says, however, that he will prove in a very unusual manner, and before morning, at that, that he did not bump Proctor off and could not have done so. I’m a bit skeptical myself. But he seems quite cocky on that score. I believe his proof will be a dud. He’s standing on a bluff—that’s what I think. Well, we’ll know more later on that, too.
P. P. P. P. S.: Good night. Get some sleep.
A. B.
Halsey finished the reading of the note. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, folding it up and tucking it safely away in the capacious pocket of the silk dressing gown. “If you’ll just wait one second till I dash off a line in answer to Mr. Baxter—and then a further moment—I’ll get the thing you’re sent for.”
He motioned them to chairs.
Standing at his desk, he wrote simply on a piece of paper:
Thanks, Artemus. In case you pick up any sort of a lead whatever to H, and incidentally hear anything about loose money floating around in the newspaper offices on the matter of Ajax getting to him first, Uncle says for me to tell you that he covers all bets, dollar for dollar.
Halse.
He sealed his brief communication in an envelope, wrote Baxter’s name on it, and handed it to the man who called himself Kenyon. Then, rescuing his keys from his clothing, he went down the dark basement stairs. He snapped on the single dusty bulb in the storeroom corridor, unlocked his own particular cubicle and again, as three times before, crawled over his trunk to the black corner where rested the big bottle of blue liquid which had been used as a model for that almost perfect replica for the suave and urbane Mr. Sumiko. He brought it upstairs and into the room. The two Federal operatives, glancing at it, although none too understandingly, that much was certain, nodded and rose. And with a curt though friendly good night, they withdrew. Halsey heard them greet the operative Sanders when they were halfway down the steps, heard a mere brief word or two passed on both sides, and then the purr of their engine as their car drew away into the night. With which, more than curious, he put out his lights and repaired back to bed again for the second time. For a little while he thought of Baxter’s cryptic note—then, as before, his thoughts flew back again to that delightful spirit in the next room; of a sudden he became conscious that he was dog-tired, physically exhausted; and then everything melted, faded away, seemingly, into a dream—a dream which seemed startlingly real—a dream in which he was rescuing a beautiful girl who was being tied to a balloon by a Chinaman with a purple mustache and a square-cut brown goatee. And the girl was Loris Hemingway!
But he had gone to sleep—and had slept a considerable number of hours before that dream had registered itself on his consciousness—for the dream was the one which is always retained by a sleeper on sharp unexpected awaking. Indeed, the bright sunlight was pouring into his room when he opened his eyes. The clock on the mantel was sonorously striking the hour of 8. And a timid knock was sounding on his door. He rose, rubbing one eye, stifling a yawn at the same time, and went to it. Chloe, her black face shining, her lace apron stiffly starched, stood there, two letters and a square wrapped package in her dusky hands.
“Oh—’scuse me, Mist’ Halsah. Didn’t know you wuz asleep yit. It’s des de mail—one passol post an’ two lettahs.”
“Thanks, Chloe.” He took them. “Say, Chloe—is Mrs. Morely mad—at me?”
“Am she—mad at you?” the girl echoed wide-eyed. She even took on a scared appearance herself. “Um, am she mad!” She lowered her voice appreciably. “She say you de mos’ immohal man she evah huhd of—enticin’ young gals into dis yeah place and a-payin’ of dey rents, dey all innocent an’—an’ lamblike—an’—an’ not knowin’ nothin’ ’bout it. She say you is a monstah of in—in—inikwitah, she call it—dat you is a loose man—dat you is a liah—dat you is a—a pillah o’ co’ruption—dat you is a demon o’ wileness—an’ she say I is to tell you dat—”
“Yes,” he said faintly, “tell her I’ll vacate tonight, at six o’clock, when my week is up. Oh baby!” he added—and Chloe, raised her black brows flirtatiously. “But I’ll have to grab that apartment quick.” And he closed the door gently into Chloe’s bewildered black face.
He sighed deeply, and raised the shade to its fullest extent. He washed his face with a vigorous circular swoop of his wash-cloth, as he had done when a small boy; and combed his hair in two vicious strokes, one left, one right. Then, in dressing gown again, he sat down in the rocking chair adjoining that big window to look at his mail.
The first letter was the selfsame one Baxter had said he had addressed around midnight: the brown Post Office sealing wax on its back, and the characteristic handwriting on its front proved that. He followed the other’s request and put it to one side. The next letter bore the corner-card of the New Publishing Company, from whom he had unsuccessfully tried the day before to obtain a copy of their own book, My Memories of the Liao Keng Ru. Puzzled, he opened it and glanced at its signature. It was that of the taciturn and monosyllabic Mr. New himself. He went hastily over its multi-paragraphed phraseology. It ran:
“I don’t think you will be,” she warned, “when Mrs. Morely tells you all she’s got laid out—to tell you.” She cuddled down in the pillow, her hand under her head. “Well, darlin’, I wish you luck—but don’t forget to lease one of those new apartments—quick.”
“I won’t,” he promised. And as he spoke, Miss Kinneally, somewhat perspicaciously, it seemed, rattled the doorknob audibly a moment, and then entered the room, blinking her eyes at the light.
“Well, that sleep made a new person out of me,” she said. “And I do hope that you two weren’t bored to death,” she added.
“Not at all,” the two younger occupants of the room both said in unison. At which she looked a bit startled. Halsey waved his fingertips at the girl in the bed. “Good night, Miss Kinneally,” he told the older woman. And he made his exit as quickly as possible, to try to begin to realize this strange new development in his life.
He went to his room, and undressing, automaton-like, turned back his bedclothes and got into his pajamas. But hardly had he buttoned the neck of those brightly striped garments halfway up, than his phone rang sharply. He sprang to it. Baxter, of course. No one else would ever be calling him at this hour. But Baxter it was not! It was his uncle, Roger Halsey.
“For Heaven’s sake, Carr,” the older man began, “I’ve tried a number of times to get you tonight. Where have you been?”
“Following up that Jap lead,” said the younger man cautiously.
“Anything—anything productive?” his uncle asked hastily.
“Nothing so far yet—with respect to our problem,” replied Halsey quite definitely. “What’s up—anything?”
“Yes. Bad news, Carr. A former janitor of mine here—his name is Olaf Jensen—has a son who’s a runner-boy down at the detective bureau. The boy, Jens Jensen, runs with messages and papers back and forth from one department to another, one floor to another. You know what a giant honeycomb the bureau is? Well, the boy was in Captain Duffy’s office tonight with a sheaf of papers—waiting for a signature or something—and caught part of a conversation between Duffy and another man—the man was undoubtedly Levenson, from the description given to me later—and, hearing my name, the boy listened as well as he could and got all he could. The minute he got off duty, he told his father. And his father came over to my place at once and handed it on to me. Carr, the bureau—Duffy himself—is all fixed to turn Hemingway over to Levenson and the Ajax outfit—and not us at all—the minute he’s found and they get done with him.”
“The devil you say? That’s bad. Baxter wasn’t sitting so solid down there as he thought.”
“No. But—wait—that isn’t all. They—Ajax—are playing every avenue now, with hard money, by which Hemingway may be turned up. Every newspaper tomorrow morning will have a paid advertisement in which they will come out flatfooted, offering $2000 this time for information which leads to the capture of Hemingway—after he is convicted of being the murderer. That’s Levenson’s cautious hand, see? The public now regards Hemingway conclusively as the Bush Bourse killer—and so Levenson hopes to make the public work just as hard—and yet perhaps not have to pay the reward money. He can’t bunk the police on that equivocation, however. The offer with them is cut and dried. Hemingway, killer or not. But wait, There’s more. Every city editor in town—yours, as well, Carr—has had a signed offer presented him of $2000 bonus money to split between himself and any of his reporters who locate Clifford Hemingway, providing the Ajax Company officials may see the man at the same time the reporters are getting Hemingway’s story. You know how it is—how newspapers, to scoop each other, often sequester their man a while when they locate him—and get his life history in the bargain. In the case of the Press—the offer is $2000 out-and-out bonus money for first interview by Ajax with Clifford Hemingway—available to reporters, sob sisters, and editors only. The actual cash, Carr, for all the rewards and bonuses, including some cash that is to go to Duffy, has been put in escrow with the Bernstein-Siegel Day and Night Bank in Old Loop, so that the signed offers won’t look like so much paper. The reason the boy was able to overhear all this was because Levenson was explaining to Duffy that none of these newspaper bonuses, or rewards, in any way nullified the secret arrangement with him, Duffy.”
“Jehosephat, Uncle. That Levenson is a swift operator, I’ll say. I’m damn sorry that Orski ever had his fool legs cut off. He’s an older man, and would probably have been much slower on the trigger himself.” Halsey was silent. “Well, all this is not so good, Uncle, I’ll admit. Looks now as though it’s you, and I, and Baxter—oh he’s with us, don’t worry—against all the city editors, the public, and the police department now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. And what a chance we’ve got!”
“Well, Uncle, I don’t know what I can do. It’s nearly three in the morning. Now if ever, damn it, I need that 90,000 bucks. And how I need it! Because I—but I won’t bother you with the reason why. All I can do now is to wait—on Baxter. He’s close to something—that may eventuate in something. Or which may give us a new lead or two. He’s to phone me immediately—if he gets a single millimeter closer to—to our objective.”
“Well all I can say is that if he can deliver the goods—to us, that is, not Ajax—I’ll insist on paying him $2000 bonus myself, out of my own killing on that Zell sale. Lord, Carr, with my 27 percent stock, I stand to pull down a terrific pot of money—more than I’ll ever be able to spend for the rest of my days. I—well—be sure and let Baxter know now, in case Levenson’s newspaper offer, and its cash backing, reaches his ears.”
“All right. I will. He could probably use $2000—to buy more pipes with.” Carr Halsey paused, undecidedly. “Well, as I say, he’s to phone me if he gets even within shouting distance of the information we need.”
“Very well, Carr,” the older man said wearily. “I’m worn out, though. I’m—I’m sick of it all.”
“Buck up. Everything comes to an end, one way or the other.”
And they said good-by.
“Damn the Ajax gang!” said Halsey morosely to himself, as he deposited the phone instrument back in its cradle. “Money certainly talks. Especially when it’s put right up in a day-and-night bank! And us—us!—the whole crowd of us—flatter than a pancake.”
He pondered a moment, troubledly, deeply, wondering where on earth in that great beehive, Federal headquarters, he could reach Baxter; and then he decided on the spot that Baxter was not one to doubledeal a friend, especially knowing the gravity of the situation. So he turned out the lights gloomily, and dropped into bed, unknowing that sooner than he thought he would have a chance of relaying his uncle’s undecisive offer on to Baxter himself. For hardly had he pulled the covers up over him, and his thoughts began to tear themselves bodily away from the never-ending exasperating problem threatening the only patrimony he might ever hope to own, to that pleasanter delightful new thing that had come into his life, that charming delicate girl who lay in the adjoining room and for whom he would like to have purchased $90,000 worth of silks, furs, gowns, motor cars and European trips, than a machine of some sort grated stridently against the curbing outside, an automobile door rattled open, and a few seconds later the doorbell of No. 810½ rang sharply. He was climbing out of bed even as it reverberated in his ears; but Miss Kinneally evidently heard it, for she was already answering it. He heard her ushering somebody—several persons, obviously—in, and even as he groped for his light switch, an authoritative knock sounded on the panels of his door. He gave up looking for the lights, and stumbled across the dark room, and, opening the door, peered out. Miss Kinneally had already gone back to her charge. There, under the lone night bulb of the front hall, stood two men, gleaming badges peeping from exposed vests, and one of them in a faultlessly cut suit holding in his hand a sealed envelope.
“Mr. Halsey,” he said, “Kenyon is my name. From Federal headquarters, downtown. Agent. This is Mr. Rice, also one of our agents. I have a note here from a friend of yours, Artemus Baxter, directing you to give over to us a bottle of some sort.”
“Come in, please.” Halsey let them in, found the lights at last, and flung a brown silk dressing gown loosely over himself. Cords of the dressing gown trailing loosely on the floor, he read the note completely, by the overhanging light. It was typewritten, but if he had had any idea or disquieting suspicions that it was a trick of some sort, he divested himself of such an idea immediately, for the phraseology was unmistakably Baxterian, and the handwriting in the signature the freakish chirography of Artemus Baxter himself, the ‘t’s looking exactly like ‘x’s, and the ‘e’s being Greek deltas so queerly made that they looked almost like the ‘t’s should have looked! The communication ran:
DEAR HALSE:
Give these two little lads the bottle of Mazoru-Ikeuna. Don’t bore them with any tales about it, as they’re just Uncle Sam’s errand boys for the moment. The secret is out at last. McCollum finally squawked, first in condensed synopsis form, and now he’s giving the fully embellished tale. We didn’t get even the preliminary synopsis, though, until he learned two things: that the Mazoru-Ikeuna was in existence, and could be gotten down here, and that a representative of the Hearst News Service would be present. That’s where we’re pulling a fast one on him, for Operator Joe Glozer is posing as the managing editor of the Herald-Examiner, our honorable Hearst newspaper here—you know Glozer used to work as a leg-man for the Herald-Ex, and has his original Herald-Ex identification folder. The lad’s an actor, too, no foolin’. And the real managing ed, Charles S. Stanton, will be red-headed if it ever gets to his ears, God bress de-kin’ gemmun! The Jap’s in another room and, I understand, hearing that McCollum is doing the Grand Sing, has announced his willingness to do the same—and, in fact, is clamoring for a megaphone and a place in line in front of our one very busy steno. I’m sorry to say, however, that I’ve nothing so far to send you on your Hemingway problem. I am right on the inside of everything down here—and I’m telling you there are durn few who are on the inside, too!—but, howin’ell could I help but be, considering that I was in on that grand finalé tonight, and that I know Inspector-General Oliver Hagman, who’s conducting this investigation, like I know my own brother, if I had one! Well, I’ll be over to your diggings when it’s all complete—probably some time in the morning, I judge—and give you the whole story, as much as there is. Wait for me, without fail. Just now I’ve got to see the whole thing out—but it looks, Halse, as though hardly a part of the whole thing can ever see print. Gosh, ain’t ’at fierce?
Artemus Baxter.
P. S.: By the way, before my particular section of the Federal Express pulled away from the Keegan farm tonight—you were already heading then, you know, for Central Air Field in the gyro, with the sky-jumping bunch—I stepped into McCollum’s radio chamber and just plucked off that highly-colored chart that was pinned to his television screen. When we reached the Federal Building, I sort of had a hunch that this story might, for Mr. Artemus Baxter, turn into one of those gentlemanly forcible detention affairs like the Saigen counterfeiting case in which it was ‘Oh, Mr. Baxter, you must stay a while—don’t bother to meet your deadline tomorrow morning!’ In fact, it looked to me as though I had a tutelary guardian at my elbow right then. Well, I had a stamped envelope in my pocket, and while my guardian stuck close, I just stepped into the letter registering room on the main floor—the Post Office part of the building—folded the chart in several directions, sealed it up in the envelope with red wax, addressed it to you, and dropped it in the collection window in the middle foyer. I had a sort of hunch that that was the only way I could ever insure having it, so as to run it on our color-page 3 of the Sun—that is, if it could be reproduced at all by the three-screen 60-line Ben Day process. Then we went on upstairs to the Federal Bureau. Now, however, Halse, it looks as though the whole story is Federal sacred-cow. You’ll get that letter, however, in the morning, and I suggest, for the time being, that you leave it unopened with the midnight postmark on it so we’ll have some sort of record or proof that it’s been safe and secluded from vulgar gaze all the while. I’ll explain later.
P. P. S.: By the way, the Jap seems to be entirely in the clear so far as any complicity in that Proctor murder goes. Claims to be able to prove by several people, including the proprietress herself, that he was in Mrs. Tuchawara’s Japanese tea-shop on Blue Island Avenue near Halsted last Wednesday from half-past two to half-past three. But what is most important, none of the prints from his saffron fingers tally in any way with those on the pestle handle, for Inspector General Hagman has sent over to the Municipal Crime Lab for an enlarged set of the prints in the Proctor murder. The Jap, my boy, is out! Wasn’t even an accomplice to it, evidently.
P. P. P. S.: Who did kill Proctor then, you ask? Well, sez I, McCollum indubitably and unquestionably done the dirty deed, judging from the facts we already know. For his finger prints tally exactly with one of the two sets on the handle. But the Mexican-German swine says, however, that he will prove in a very unusual manner, and before morning, at that, that he did not bump Proctor off and could not have done so. I’m a bit skeptical myself. But he seems quite cocky on that score. I believe his proof will be a dud. He’s standing on a bluff—that’s what I think. Well, we’ll know more later on that, too.
P. P. P. P. S.: Good night. Get some sleep.
A. B.
Halsey finished the reading of the note. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, folding it up and tucking it safely away in the capacious pocket of the silk dressing gown. “If you’ll just wait one second till I dash off a line in answer to Mr. Baxter—and then a further moment—I’ll get the thing you’re sent for.”
He motioned them to chairs.
Standing at his desk, he wrote simply on a piece of paper:
Thanks, Artemus. In case you pick up any sort of a lead whatever to H, and incidentally hear anything about loose money floating around in the newspaper offices on the matter of Ajax getting to him first, Uncle says for me to tell you that he covers all bets, dollar for dollar.
Halse.
He sealed his brief communication in an envelope, wrote Baxter’s name on it, and handed it to the man who called himself Kenyon. Then, rescuing his keys from his clothing, he went down the dark basement stairs. He snapped on the single dusty bulb in the storeroom corridor, unlocked his own particular cubicle and again, as three times before, crawled over his trunk to the black corner where rested the big bottle of blue liquid which had been used as a model for that almost perfect replica for the suave and urbane Mr. Sumiko. He brought it upstairs and into the room. The two Federal operatives, glancing at it, although none too understandingly, that much was certain, nodded and rose. And with a curt though friendly good night, they withdrew. Halsey heard them greet the operative Sanders when they were halfway down the steps, heard a mere brief word or two passed on both sides, and then the purr of their engine as their car drew away into the night. With which, more than curious, he put out his lights and repaired back to bed again for the second time. For a little while he thought of Baxter’s cryptic note—then, as before, his thoughts flew back again to that delightful spirit in the next room; of a sudden he became conscious that he was dog-tired, physically exhausted; and then everything melted, faded away, seemingly, into a dream—a dream which seemed startlingly real—a dream in which he was rescuing a beautiful girl who was being tied to a balloon by a Chinaman with a purple mustache and a square-cut brown goatee. And the girl was Loris Hemingway!
But he had gone to sleep—and had slept a considerable number of hours before that dream had registered itself on his consciousness—for the dream was the one which is always retained by a sleeper on sharp unexpected awaking. Indeed, the bright sunlight was pouring into his room when he opened his eyes. The clock on the mantel was sonorously striking the hour of 8. And a timid knock was sounding on his door. He rose, rubbing one eye, stifling a yawn at the same time, and went to it. Chloe, her black face shining, her lace apron stiffly starched, stood there, two letters and a square wrapped package in her dusky hands.
“Oh—’scuse me, Mist’ Halsah. Didn’t know you wuz asleep yit. It’s des de mail—one passol post an’ two lettahs.”
“Thanks, Chloe.” He took them. “Say, Chloe—is Mrs. Morely mad—at me?”
“Am she—mad at you?” the girl echoed wide-eyed. She even took on a scared appearance herself. “Um, am she mad!” She lowered her voice appreciably. “She say you de mos’ immohal man she evah huhd of—enticin’ young gals into dis yeah place and a-payin’ of dey rents, dey all innocent an’—an’ lamblike—an’—an’ not knowin’ nothin’ ’bout it. She say you is a monstah of in—in—inikwitah, she call it—dat you is a loose man—dat you is a liah—dat you is a—a pillah o’ co’ruption—dat you is a demon o’ wileness—an’ she say I is to tell you dat—”
“Yes,” he said faintly, “tell her I’ll vacate tonight, at six o’clock, when my week is up. Oh baby!” he added—and Chloe, raised her black brows flirtatiously. “But I’ll have to grab that apartment quick.” And he closed the door gently into Chloe’s bewildered black face.
He sighed deeply, and raised the shade to its fullest extent. He washed his face with a vigorous circular swoop of his wash-cloth, as he had done when a small boy; and combed his hair in two vicious strokes, one left, one right. Then, in dressing gown again, he sat down in the rocking chair adjoining that big window to look at his mail.
The first letter was the selfsame one Baxter had said he had addressed around midnight: the brown Post Office sealing wax on its back, and the characteristic handwriting on its front proved that. He followed the other’s request and put it to one side. The next letter bore the corner-card of the New Publishing Company, from whom he had unsuccessfully tried the day before to obtain a copy of their own book, My Memories of the Liao Keng Ru. Puzzled, he opened it and glanced at its signature. It was that of the taciturn and monosyllabic Mr. New himself. He went hastily over its multi-paragraphed phraseology. It ran:
