The box from japan, p.88
The Box from Japan, page 88
“But he abandoned this line of thought for the moment. And went back to the idea of his original errand, to go over to Tower Court and have a sort of look-see over the little street. And that’s what brings us to the Mystery of the Disappearing Cyclops!
“He rolled up to Tower Court at around 3:15 or so. Parked his machine at the corner. Walked up the street to pike Number 810½ over—sort of see, from the place where you lived, what kind of a guy you must be, Halse. And then—he got the shock of his life. From the very sidewalk he could see the bottle itself which you had told Kogo earlier in the day wasn’t even on the premises; the afternoon sun, coming down through the upper part of that crack over there—” Baxter nodded his head toward the tightly fastened paneled oak sliding doors which cut off Halsey’s room from Loris Hemingway’s room, “—hitting it from behind, glinted down through it, he says, sort of murkily blue. He knew immediately it was the thing he was after: the bottle which carried on it the most important paper that ever existed for Revolutionary Mexico’s cause. In that moment, Halse, reason, patience and good sense fled. He just couldn’t stand not making a try for it himself. He had two full days yet to stop that recognition of Almedo by Great Britain. But his emotions got the better of him. Like mine did, with my peashooter last night!
“You know the rest. He tried to work a confidence game on Miss—er—your future wife, who came to the door. But it didn’t work. Smart girl, your wife! But she had declared there was nobody at home. As for him, he always carried a blackjack, and always had on him a bunch of master keys the equal of that carried by the very first-class, grade-A, No. 1 spies of Europe. So he just knocked her galley-west with a blow from that jack, and dove for the door of your room. Locked! Out came the keys. But you know what happened. Had he gotten that bottle that day, Mr. Jap would never have come back next morning—and about noon the next day every Hearst paper in America would be carrying the story, a flaming editorial by Art Brisbane, and a zinc etching of the whole document. For Frantzius’ money was already even then in his broker’s hands, waiting instructions.”
“But he got driven away by the North Central policeman before he found a skeleton key to fit my door. All right. And then—”
“Off he drove lickety-split, cursing his blundering stupidity. He knew the police radio of Chicago only too well, though. Knew that he’d be picked up inside of a minute or two, at most, with that prominent Cyclops car. Assault, with intent to murder—5 years in Joliet! Ouch! It was too late to abandon the car, and then report it stolen. Even if that was a safe thing to do, considering his own striking appearance. You see, Halse, he had been negotiating with the National Automobile Exchange on Roosevelt Row, during the last week, towards turning in his own Packingson-12 with them and getting a Cyclops. And they had acquired a Cyclops finally. From a man named Stapleton Cowley-Brown, living at the Chicago Beach Hotel, who was going to France. The complete exchange of cars, money and all, had been made that very morning. So—if he left this car anywhere, it would be traced by its license plates immediately to Stapleton Cowley-Brown, thence to the National Auto Exchange, and thence straight to him, for his name and business address were on file with them. He was in a jam. There was nothing, so far as he could see, but to be philosophical, take it on the chin, and junk about $2000 worth of car. And mighty quickly, too,
“When he’d been parked up at Dearborn and Division Streets a while before he’d noted a big empty lot. Noticed it through a canvas slit, that is! For it was walled in all about, except for a wagon entrance, with a canvas fence, fully 15 feet high. So that people couldn’t line up and stare at certain building operations scheduled to go on in it. For a big skyscraping apartment hotel, or something like that, evidently, was to have been erected there. Deep excavations had been made—but work had stopped, Labor trouble, perhaps. Or financing trouble. I don’t know. But the whole excavated region, far down below the level of the street, was full of water. Water that reached almost to the level of a first basement ceiling. Perhaps a city water pipe had been struck in the excavating. No pumping had been done, Nothing fronted directly on the lot but the blank brick side of another tall apartment building, with no windows in it whatsoever.
“So Frantzius shot straight for Division and Dearborn again. Turned in the wagon entrance of this walled lot, which itself turned almost immediately at right angles, and slid down, to far below the street. Ran his car a short distance along the solid ground that lay under the propped-up sidewalks above him. Turned it again, this time toward the water inundated excavation. And then, protected utterly from sight by the canvas walls far up above him, put on the slow speed, stepped off—”
“And the disappearing Cyclops rolled off into—”
“About ten feet of water. And at that very second 500 squad cars all over Chicago were being thrown into a net that would have caught a mosquito, let alone a Cyclops.
“Well,” continued Baxter, “you know the rest. He went home on the interurban that night, you can bet! And he didn’t tell the Jap, either, what a fool play he’d made—on Tower Court. He was ashamed of himself. And afraid the Jap might get scared to go after the bottle next morning. He—what’s that? What did he do the balance of the afternoon, after the Cyclops took a nose dive?
“You ought to be able to guess that. He put it in downtown. Trying, chiefly, to locate a copy—an unimpaired copy, that is—of that Mexican physics book. So that he could shoot the formula into Revolutionary Mexico next night, without fail. For as you know, he couldn’t get the ether beam at all, on Wednesday nights, and he didn’t want any more delay than necessary on getting that formula down there. But he couldn’t locate a copy of the book. And that’s how he came to the brilliant decision of having them decode it on their end—and to use that night’s Tribute radio book review—the one he used to use, when it was conducted by a Fritz Schmidt, to send small unobtrusive bits of information to his confederates down there—so that his outfit would have the book all ready at hand next night. The review he cooked up was just a simple little 100-word thing, a mere announcement, which ended: ‘If you are interested in Mexican affairs, science, thought, or language, get this book!’ And Weeping Louis, as you know, wept it onto Miss Botcher’s broadcast, since Frantzius was able to give him a genuine copy to back it up with—to make it look quite on the up-and-up to her and the station censor.
“Which brings us now practically to the end of things. Frantzius read all the papers that evening about Proctor’s death, but carried none of ’em out home to Keegan’s Road. He let the Jap come in for the bottle next day. And last night, after that gang down there in Cusihuiriachic had caught wise to the hidden hint in the radioed book review the preceding evening, and had the book at hand—7 copies of it!—you and I neatly stopped sending Hemingway’s formula itself, in its actual colors. During which, all the while, Br’er Frantzius was coolly preparing, by the aid of certain of his strongarm men, to make one last stab—through one, Carr Halsey—to get that Nicaragua-Japan pact paper in case it was the said Carr Halsey who had done some unaccountable monkey-work, and for no explainable reason, instead of Prince Ido’s secret service men five long years before. My boy, the story is over. The mystery is no more!”
Halsey was silent. For a long time, in fact, the two men sat, lost in their thoughts. Halsey broke the intense stillness that seemed to fill the room. “If Frantzius’ story of that alibi is right,” he said slowly and reluctantly, “and you people seem to have confirmed it in every possible way, then we are further than ever from knowing who Wen Proctor’s murderer is. But this unexpected development, Artemus, throws my mind on a new tack altopether. Thus far the presence of the Mazoru-Ikeuna in Proctor’s death—or apparently its presence—and the presence, likewise, of Clifford Hemingway’s name in both the Mazoru mystery and Proctor’s message, seemed to make the latter’s death conclusively mixed up with the Japanese dye. It—it inhibited a person from even thinking of making any other hypothesis concerning Proctor’s death. But now all those interweavings of one element with another are pretty well explained away. And Frantzius, the most logical murderer, with an alibi, to boot!” He shook his head. “It now looks very much to me, Artemus, as though I shall have to divulge something in Proctor’s life that I had hoped would never pass my lips, were he living or dead. Although I’m not certain it will be a damned bit of good toward practically locating anything as to the real facts of his death. But be that as that may, the mystery is over—and I haven’t got my man with the 2-percent American Projectiscope stock—nor my ninety thousand bucks—”
“No, you haven’t,” agreed Baxter grimly. He wrinkled up his brow in a series of fierce corrugations. He spoke. “Halse, I have not been able at any time to divest myself entirely of the idea that Frantzius has lied—in some way—about that message on the floor. And I’ve sold Oliver Hagman himself on making a desperate experiment. In fact—” Baxter glanced at his watch, “—in fact, it’s being made right now, I believe, and right in the Federal Bureau itself. If ever an experiment will get the truth, Halse, this one will. For Mr. Frantzius is just about now viewing a most horrible sight. A dead body, Halse, encased in a pine box to which damp fresh earth is still clustering—a body from which quicklime has eaten practically every vestige of the flesh. A grinning dead body, practically only a skeleton now, and identifiable only now by its dental work. If Frantzius lied—I am willing to bet you my bottom dollar that when he sees that carcass—and hears a certain thing or two—that he comes out with the truth. And mighty fast. So if that phone rings again, just let me handle the call. I may yet earn enough money by these feeble wits of mine to buy you that pickle dish!”
CHAPTER LXVI
When the Phone Rang
Halsey stared uncomprehendingly at the other. “A dead body, Artemus? With its flesh—”
The other shivered a bit. Which was an unusual thing for a veteran newspaperman, inured to every kind of ghastly sight, to do. “Early this morning, Halse,” he said slowly, “a small corps of Federal men were delegated to raid an old brewery on Clybourn Avenue that was supposed to be padlocked. They broke in, but with considerable trouble, for they found additional walls inside to prevent their ingress. They also found several gigantic hogsheads of mash, about three enormous stills going, and several freight cars drawn up on a spur right inside the place, loaded with green alky. Undoubtedly it was a Mala place, for nobody in this town but he would have the money to equip a joint like that. There was an escape tunnel, barred, and all the alky loaders and still-tenders got away. But the Federal men prodded around, and one of ’em found a place where something had apparently been buried in the soft earth, near the base of one of the giant hogsheads of mash. They dug. Came to a crude box, a few feet below the surface, packed with quicklime, and in it a body. Evidently a still-tender—or minor hoodlum—who got into a fight, and caught a slug through the heart, or a knife in the ribs. The flesh, as I say, had all been eaten off the face. They fetched the box up to Federal headquarters. Fresh with damp loam. Smelling like—like hell! Most damnably horrid sight I ever saw in my life, Halse. Hagman figures it’s been buried about a month, more or less. He had a man pry open the jaws. There’s some peculiar dental work there, induding a small diamond chip cemented in an upper front tooth. Hagman knew the bird in an instant, for he’d known him in life. It was Benny Friedheimer, a minor gangster, alky peddler, still-tender—and what have you.
“We went back to our regular job of co-ordinating Frantzius’ and Kogo’s story, after we’d gone up to the cooler and seen the stiff. Phew! Worst thing I ever looked at! It—but I got to thinking. You know, Halse, while Frantzius may be perfectly honest about that message, I can’t help but believe that he might, also, have been lying. This fellow Hemingway may not be under that name, Sam Smith, much less in Alaska. I told Hagman I figured that maybe Frantzius didn’t know he was going to be stuck in the brig incommunicado—and that he might have had an idea that he could yet reach one of his henchmen, like Weeping Louis, and have the Weeper put that last proposition to Hemingway. So I suggested to Hagman the experiment in question. Let morning come, I said. Full day time. So that the Fed men would presumably have had a chance to have searched the whole Keegan farm. Then pull Frantzius in the cooler. Uncover that grinning piece of putrefaction on him. Tell him it was found buried on the fringe of his Keegan farm—that a deaf man named Cal Clump has identified it as the missing Hemingway, and that the Federal Department has decided to let Frantzius go to the chair for killing Clifford X.! Halse, if he’s lying, he’ll break sure. That body is the most unnerving thing I ever looked at. And Frantzius will have to came clean to save his skin. I—”
There was another sudden ring on the telephone. Baxter had, in the meantime, again withdrawn from his pocket the slip of paper carrying that alleged floor message, and was staring moodily at it, as he had been speaking. Now at the raucous jangle of the gongs, he sprang to his feet, slip in hand. “Three minutes of 10,” he said laconically. “Maybe it’s Hagman himself.”
He dropped into the chair in front of the cradle phone. Raised the instrument. Halsey could hear a clean-cut and very brusque and businesslike voice emanating from the audi-talker.
“That you, Baxter?”
“Yes, Hagman. Yes. What news?”
“He cracked!”
“The devil you say?”
“Yes. We had him absolutely convinced we dug it up on the edge of the farm. One of my best men, an Italian, Vincento Starrettino, put on an act describing its disinterment, that knocked him cold. I showed him a diagram of exactly where it was supposed to have been found. He was scared stiff. Absolutely trembled. Don’t know if it was that damned Friedheimer corpse—or the thought that he was facing the chair. We had to hold him up from both sides.”
“And what—what did he say, Hagman?”
“He snarled that some farmer around there had pulled a killing—and that he was to be framed on it. He said—have you got that slip of paper you copied, this morning? The one comprising that floor message?”
“Yes. Right here in my hands.”
“All right. I’ll re-read it as it should be. All you’ll have to do, Baxter, is to strike out just a few words, and substitute a few in their place. This is the way it should run, line for line. As follows: First line: Pub admin—”
But here Baxter leaned forward and interrupted. “Wait till I turn off this audi-talker, Hagman. I don’t want to muff a single word—at this stage.” Now the phone, or at least its loudspeaking component, was silent. Baxter was busily scratching off a few words from his slip of paper—adding a few, too, as Halsey could see. He was nodding his head all the while he did it. He handed the slip silently back to Halsey, who stood close by in his stocking feet. The latter, quite stupefied by this last development, stared down at the message. Amended, it read:
Pub admin: case my death or disabil deliv sealed ene in amm-sulp jar unopened to Clifford X. Hemingway under name of Stanley Proctor in Prohib Hosp his property solely also please notify—
Dazedly, he heard the audi-talker talking again, Baxter having again pressed the button which threw it in the circuit.
“Have you checked him yet, Hagman, as to this new version? I mean, by ringing the Prohib Hospital?”
“Tried to only ten minutes ago, Baxter, but telephone repair men are splicing in a whole new inlet cable to the hospital—there was some kind of an accident to it last night—and the workman who was in on the circuit said that phone service on that particular cable will not be available for about a half-hour yet—or twenty minutes, at least.” There was a momentary pause in the words of the downtown Federal man. “However, Baxter,” he added reassuringly, “Frantzius himself says he checked the matter by phone next day. Of course he then had Hemingway’s formula itself; so he didn’t need any longer to chase the young fellow up in person. But he rang the Prohib Hospital, just the same. Asked whether there was a Mr. Stanley Proctor there. They told him yes—that he was registered as being from Utica, New York, and would doubtlessly be in that hospital for some weeks yet to come.”
“Okay and sufficient,” commented Baxter, with huge satisfaction manifest in his voice. “It’s plain we’ve got the truth this time. Well, now another thing, Hagman. Have you decided yet what time you’re going to let the papers know you have something to release to them on the Bush Bourse murder? You’re to give me a half-hour’s advance notice, you know? And I’ve been playing fair myself.”
“Yes. Well, I’m giving you your notice now. I notified all the papers a half-hour ago that at 10:30, but not before, we’d hand out multigraphed bulletins, the way we usually do. I expect them all to have a leg-man up here prompt on the hour, to get their handout.” Now Hagman’s voice seemed to come from the audi-talker as though it were not falling directly on the telephone transmitter at his end, but at an angle: as though he were addressing somebody else. “You say you’re not connected in any way whatever with the regular editorial staff of the Tribute?”
Silence.
Baxter, frowning, leaned forward: “Hagman, are there any reporters there with you?”
