The Man with the Magic Eardrums Read online

  Where I proceeded to forget the noxious incident. And where, one year later, I read of Jemimah’s death in a brawl—an East Indian customer angry because she would not obtain for him, for his entertainment, a white hunch-backed girl. For the bizarre—that was the sort of thing Jemimah purveyed! And then—still later—I had married her whom I did. White! Decent! Educated! Finely bred! Of fine parentage. And, in her veins—Southern blood!

  To have ever told her of that episode back in Quarter, Moon Road, London, would, of course, have been utterly impossible. For the whole hopelessly incredible affair sounded, I knew, like the story of a weakling—an even once-half-degenerate-himself weakling, wont to frequent dark unwholesome regions in big cities where real men would not step foot—an explanation of a mephitic chapter in that weakling’s own life. And besides—the story contained a Negress! While she whom I had married—well—in her delicate veins flowed Southern blood.

  Enough is said!

  For never—in a thousand years—would she have believed; and, if she had, never could she have understood—by the thousandth of 1 per cent!

  But worse and still worse—Jemimah Cobb had not been killed! That was the unimportant correction—in the facts of her apparent “demise”—which the newspapers of that day forgot to print. She had not died! As I had found only when her recent crime—the murder of her rich Chinese lover, Mock Lu, owner of the big restaurant on Piccadilly—came to light. And then, quickly on its heels—and in the true British fashion!—her conviction. And then, in turn, the absolute and unqualified refusal of the Home Secretary—the court of last appeal in England!—even to com­mute her sentence. Even though, in the hopes of a commutation, she had given him—or allegedly so—the solution of the baffling British Mulkovitch Riddle—the case of some bearded Russian, known here and there about some of London’s cafés, who was known definitely to have walked into one of her dives five years ago—was known likewise, through competent detective obser­vers, never to have walked out—but of whom neither hide nor hair was ever found, even though the house had been torn down and ground torn up! And which “amazing solution”—as the Home Secretary himself had termed it—he had written out and placed with his private memoirs to be published only after his death; rather—to be exact—would write the solution out—and place it thus—10 minutes after the gallows trap should fall. And which falling had been set for 9 in the morning! And now—additionally enraged by the refusal of the Home Secretary to bargain with her—Jemimah was going triumphantly to name the white American who had once wedded her by bell, book and candle. And was going to reveal what she termed “the completely unfindable hiding-place” of that doubly signed certificate. And let the chips fall where they may—be it a second wife in America who would thus become no wife at all, or be it—as the black ignorant creature plainly hoped—an international conflict, America going to war with England! And nothing—quite noth­ing—she had sneeringly told the three British reporters who had interviewed her, would stop her tongue when she stood on that Pentonville gallows, before Prison-Governor, guards, official ex­ecu­tion inspectors—and journalists! In that significantly solemn moment allowed every executed murderer by British law. In which to make his—or her—last statement. That moment which even the Prison-Governor had told the Press Jemimah Cobb would have. That moment which, in the case of Jemimah Cobb, was to be one minute to 9 a.m. London time!

  Or one minute to 3 a.m. by the clock facing me across the room.

  Five hours—and a fraction—from this moment!

  And in view of the fact that Jemimah Cobb was, at this second, locked in back of tons of steel and stone—and 5000 miles away—there seemed, indeed, no way on God’s green earth to avert that revelation.

  No way, unless—

  And I thought deeply.

  For maybe—maybe this man seated in front of me now—was the solution for that seemingly impossible problem. If and perhaps! Maybe—

  And my questioning of him took on a definite turn.

  CHAPTER III

  Nixon-Duvall—Type 36-B

  “What’s your specialty?” I began. “If I might ask? You know, it’s a—a sort of treat—to talk with a real second-story man. You might even be—yes, you might!—a safeblower.”

  “Yeah?” His voice was sneering. “Well then—where’s my tools? Soup. Wedges. Putty.”

  “Whoa—Tilly! You do seem to know a bit, at that, about blowing safes.” I surveyed him again puzzledly, through half-closed eyelids. And not afraid in the least, as I did so, of his getting rambunctious, for I could have dropped him, with a shot from my coat pocket only, before he could have made even half a move to get out of that chair. “For instance,” I went on, “assuming, now, that the jewels—which, by God, I believe you’re after!—are over there in that safe which is walled in, with con­crete, clear up to its door, in that brickwork wall back of you there, just how did you expect to get ’em? That’s what puzzles me.”

  He turned his head clear about and took a good, long, and square look at the safe door. And as he did so, I caught sight of a peculiar little device of some sort stuck well into his ear—into the channel of the ear, that is! It must have been a slightly tapering hollow cylinder, whatever it was, to fit so snugly in there; but made of some sort of hard rubber, as it undoubtedly was, it was nevertheless ingeniously flesh-colored—and therefore as good as invisible against the actual flesh of his ear. Only because we were no more than about 4 feet apart—and because I was staring straight into and at his ear when he turned his head, was I ever aware that he had such a device there.

  He brought his gaze back.

  “Take a look,” I said, “at that arched doorway over there.” Knowing that that would cause him to look around the other way.

  He did so, obviously curious about the cause of my question. And in his other ear was the same cone-like—or cylinder-like—device, as before, ingeniously flesh-tinted. He brought his gaze puzzledly back.

  “What are those things—in your ears?”

  “Say now—don’t—don’t get pers’nal,” he said nettled.

  “And you,” I told him, nettled a bit myself, “just answer all my questions—if you have any hopes whatsoever of getting out of here tonight without handcuffs on you.”

  His face brightened just a trifle at my latter words. But a pained look nevertheless rested on it as he answered.

  “Well—you asked what—what those things—in my ears are. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. King, that if you wasn’t sitting there with a gat near your mitt, I’d tell you you were nuts as hell—and that there wasn’t anything in my ears—and that if there was, it wasn’t any of your goddamned business! However—you’re holding aces right now. So all right. They’re—they’re Cromely Patented Eardrums—at least I call ’em drums—they’re really little trumpets—for deaf people—people, that is, with certain kinds of deafness.”

  “But you hear pretty good though?”

  “Hell—yes! Damn sight better than you!” And there, in his last words, was the typical defective, aggrandizing a particular ability to cover his sense of infirmity in that direction.

  “And when they’re out of your ears—what?”

  His face grew more pained than ever.

  “You sure do love to stick a finger, Mr. King, in an ulcer! All right. You asked for it. When I take ’em out, I can’t hear a police siren blown ten feet from my face.”

  “Much less, words?”

  “Correct. I—I couldn’t hear a guy asking me to have a shot o’ 17-year-old bottled-in-bond.”

  “You are deaf then!” I conceded. “Well, we’ll abandon this tack. Now, Givney, let’s get back to fundamentals. There’s nothing in this room worth stealing. Except one skull—worth $5, and no more, to you! And one silver trophy cup—worth about the same, when melted down. And nothing downstairs—but fur­niture. All the really worth-while things in this house—for
your kind—jewelry!—are in that safe back of you. And so, if what you wanted here was in that safe—how in the devil were you going to get into it? Without tools?”

  “I—I wasn’t going t’ try to get in.”

  “Bull!” I retorted. “You weren’t picking up bric-a-brac.”

  “Have it your own way,” he said grumpily.

  “I have it that way already,” was my answer to him. “And in spite of that I’m going to give you—you poor half-witted idiot!—a chance to talk. Maybe to talk yourself out of a bad spot. Now get wise to yourself. I’m not a bad guy—and having come more than half the way across the continent, and successfully dodged a Senatorial subpoena that damned near might have been served on me—and scented a 1 in 10 chance to avert a certain ugly hap­pening in London—I’m feeling actually charitable. In short, I have an impulse to be lenient with you. But you’ve got to speak up. And put all your cards, baby, on the table. So first: what do you know about safest’

  For the first time he betrayed a little interest.

  “Well, that depends. Now f’r instance—take that one back o’ me there—” He inclined his head slightly back of his left shoulder to the walled-in safe. “Now that’s a 5-dial Nixon-Duvall burglar-proof crib—put out by th’ American Safe Company o’ Westover, Massachussets. Guaranteed t’ be one hundred per cent noiseless. Because it don’t use tumblers—not even air-cushioned ones. The dials got to be set jest so-so—then they close an electric circuit inside that automatic-like op’rates th’ bolts. Which are one hundred per cent noiseless too! An’ there’s over 40 quardrillion settings possible on th’ 5 dials—none o’ which but th’ right one draws them bolts. In fact, summing up all I’ve just spouted, that partic’lar safe is th’ American Safe Comp’ny’s Nixon-Duvall—” He wrinkled his brows and pondered a moment—“36-B!”

  “Boy—howdy!” I exclaimed. “But you know your stuff! Well now, for instance—take that safe. Which, by the way, I installed for my wife’s use—and not for my own, my own old tomato can downtown in the Plymouth Building being plenty good enough to hold the worthless I.O.U.’s I collect from time to time, in my business. Now my wife is the only person—at least so far as I know—in the whole wide world, who knows exactly how those 5 dials back of you do have to be set, to open that strong-box. And you seem to know just about everything there is to know about such things. So—is that safe truly burglar-proof? Can it be opened—without tools—nitro-glycerine—anything?”

  “Well—I can answer that. It can’t be opened—with tools. Because it’s made o’ patented undrillable steel—so damned hard that a diamond point running for an hour wouldn’t hardly make a pin-point prick in its surface. It can’t be opened with soup—that being nitro, you know?—because the door is micro-machined with respect to th’ casing—if you know what that means. Yes. It’s some new kind o’ patented machining an’ surfacing process. Even th’ hinges are micro-drilled, and are entirely minus what they call ‘lost-motion.’ In short, no peterman could get any kind of a wedge between that door and the casing nowhere—not even a safety-razor blade, if he had a wedge maybe one molycule thick—then yes, maybe. But there ain’t any wedges like that.” He paused. “So—does that satisfy you?”

  “You certainly seem to know your stuff,” I commented. “Well, that leaves only a third possible method—as I understand such things. The Jimmy Valentine method! Can the safe be opened by manipulation—sure—I heard what you said about it being silent—because of not having any tumblers—and I ought to know considerable about it in view of the long spiel by the salesman who sold the safe to me—but can it—here—I’ll put it dif­ferently—for you seem to know more than any salesman about that kind of a safe—or else about that company’s products!—can you open that safe—all alone—unaided?”

  He crossed his legs. “Yes? No? Wouldn’t that be telling things, though! And did I even try such a scrooey thing like that, to prove to you whether I could or not, wouldn’t my mitts be plastered nice all over the door? Wouldn’t they? And then, instead o’ handing me in on a charge o’ plain housebreaking, you’d be telling those coppers I was a jug-heavy—trying to make your pete—by a combo-twirl. And then it’d be 10 in the Big House at Stillwater—instead o’ 5.” He put his thumbs in the arm-holes of his brown vest, and commenced to whistle a gay little tune. “Well, when do we go? And where do we go—from here?”

  I frowned. This fellow had known, without even going up close to inspect the gilt lettering on that safe, its make—makers—and type. He was, I figured then and there, a lot more versed in that field than he wanted to appear to be.

  “Come on,” I urged. “Play ball! You come in my library—with no tools—you know all about my safe—or rather, my wife’s safe, to be specific—and then don’t know whether you can open it or not. If I told you how much I blew for that piece of high-grade machinery, you’d—”

  “You don’t need to tell me. It set you back exactly 1500 bucks.”

  “That settles it!” I exclaimed. “You know enough,” about that safe that you must know still more. Now come on—just between us—man to man—have you got some inside secret for opening it—or were you just picking up bric-a-brac?”

  He surveyed me with a far-away expression. “I can’t make you, Mr. King. I think, at that, you’re baiting me. However—now, about that safe. You ask me—if I can open it. A burglar-proof safe. How in hell could I open—a burglar-proof safe?”

  “Damned if I know,” I admitted quite frankly. “Only—I think you came here with some idea of getting into it. Maybe your tools are down on the grass.”

  “Go down and look,” he urged, though manifestly not be­lieving I was such a fool.

  I smiled. I should, of course, have groaned at the thought of that black degenerate across the Atlantic—framing in her warped mind even now exactly what she was going to say on that gallows—and how she was going to say it. But my profession was one that made all the men in it ever able to smile—up and to the moment of catastrophe. In short—as I’d always put it—“the show is never over till the curtain-weight has bumped the stage!” And I replied to the suggestion of the stocky little man in front of me.

  “Then that’s that!” I said. “You’re too cheerfully certain that the police, when they come, won’t find any tools. Hm.” I paused. He had me profoundly puzzled. “Now come on. I’m not baiting you. Consider I’m just handriding you—and not laying the bat. And—but here, I’d better explain what I mean by that. It’s a racetrack expression—and it means I’m not trying to force you to speed up by a single inch—not giving you the whip, in other words. So come on—man to man—be frank, and—no—here—I’ll put a sporting proposition to you. In view of the fact that I’m a bookmaker—yes, and a square one too, incidentally—I’ll—”

  “Are you trying to inform me,” he said archly, “that you maybe got something to do with horse racing? Handriding—a guy! Laying—the bat! Say—if you’d just as lief stick to English, I’ll take all that on credit. Because I don’t monkey with the ponies, and don’t know the lingo. I’ll put you down as a bookie—and let it go at that.”

  I smiled. “And why do anything else? Just the same,” I said, “stating my social status definitely, Givney, and confirming the Minneapolis Despatch, won’t hurt any. For it might interest you, at that, to know that the rank and file of bookies never use a single expression of the track at all.”

  “They don’t? Why?”

  “People always trying to cadge inside tips out of them,” I explained to him curtly. “So they learn to—well—dissimulate on turf matters.”

  “Then—then,” he said, helplessness staring in his tones, “why, now, you—”

  “Why do I? Well it just happens that I had the misfortune—or fortune—however you look at it—to come up to the bookie stands by way of the paddock, see? And it was in the paddock—as a mere kid—a jockey, see?—where my track-lingo came to m
e. And stuck. And—but here—this isn’t a story of my life. It’s you, I think, who’s on the pan. So I’ll put you that sporting proposition. For betting one thing—against another—is my meat. You see, I’ve never seen a bird like you work—however the devil you do your work. And I’d like to have something to tell my good friends at the Nicollet Racing Club downtown. And so here it is: if you can get Mrs. King’s safe open—by fair means or foul—so that I can give her the scare of her life!—I’ll be careless enough to shut my eyes—and let you walk out of here—through the same window you came in by?”

  Exultantly he rose to his feet. “Say—are you on the square about that, Mr. King? Do you mean it? I can walk out o’ here—if I can jiggle that combination open?”

  “What,” I asked him calmly, “did the Minneapolis Despatch say about me—in that article in your hip pocket? For I presume they devoted plenty of space to me?”

  “Well, t’ be frank, they said you were known also as Square-Shooter King.”

  “All right. Evidently then the Despatch isn’t prejudiced against me. So you can put your faith in it. Yes,” I affirmed, “I’ll do what I tell you I’ll do. And the American Safe Company, I don’t mind telling you, either, will lay 1500 pesos on my lap—and take their junk back!”

  “It’s a bet, is it?”

  “All,” I said,” except that I want to know, if you do it how you do it?”

  “We-e-ell—that’s adding on to th’ prop’sition, ain’t it?”

  “Or,” I said, “as we have it on the track: I’m pulling a ‘creep-up’ on you, eh?”

  “Yes. Creep-up—or whatever th’ hell you call it.”

  “Well,” I commented, “it seems to me that I’m the doctor around here—when it comes to dictating terms. After all—one shot through that plump gizzard of yours—and I’ll get a vote of thanks from the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for knocking off one more petty crook. And sit down. You—you make me nervous—standing up.”