The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Read online

  “How much,” said the young man, gazing troubledly at a big telechron clock at the end of the silver-like store, “is that old silver watch there, with ‘I. V.’ engraved on it?”

  “We-ell—now in a manner of speaking—”

  “Quick!” said the young man. “Name your lowest price, or else!”

  “We-ell—well, it’s $4. And it keeps—”

  “Can you, in the next few minutes, while I’m on an errand, engrave a half-circle loop on that ‘I,’ changing it into a ‘P’—and an additional angle on the ‘V,’ making it a ‘W’?”

  “Why, yes—sure. It might look a little—”

  “Do it, please,” said the young man. “The ‘I’ into a ‘P’—and the ‘V’ into a ‘W.’ And here’s $2 on account. And if it isn’t done in 15 minutes when I come back, I’ll have to pass it—”

  “It’ll be done!” said the old man. “And—and I’ll rub acid across the fresh cuts to make the engraving look uniform.”

  And almost before Mr. Piffington Wainwright, the owner of the initials in question, was out of the door, the old man was locking the watch in a felt-lined vise; was, in fact, before Mr. Wainwright was ten feet distant, cutting, with sure hand, a neat curling sliver of silver from the watch case.

  At the corner, Mr. Wainwright waited for a taxicab to come along. Reflecting deeply, as he waited, on the newsstory he had read.

  “Wild defense, all right—J. D.’s claiming amnesia! And ‘hypnotic amnesia’—of all things! Just a stall, of course, for time; for with that defense he hasn’t a cha—hm?—say, I might be able to sew my own entrance into this affair up a bit tighter if Dr. Mironovski really is out of town. But—”

  But standing not on suppositions, he stepped into a drugstore in back of him, the name of which—as shown on a huge sign over its door—was VADO’S. And inserted himself immediately into a line of 3 persons in front of a cashier’s booth which, from the placard above the wicket, sold telephone slugs. With the result that he met for the very first time in his young life—met, that is, in a sense—one of Chicago’s famous figures; no less, in fact, than—

  For a man in a pharmacist’s tan coat, back of a counter just to one side of the line, was speaking to a customer who, himself, leaned, in profile, on the counter, chin in hand and—the pharmacist, that is—was saying:

  “Yes, Mayor Sweeney, this particular remedy of mine will knock out any headache that ever existed. Except, of course—ahem—”

  Mr. Wainright, being always glad to meet the famous, turned slightly in line to survey his Mayor.

  Mayor Gardiner Sweeney, now turning about in his hand a small demoniacal-looking green-glass bottle, was a man of about 50, with rather small greenish-blue eyes, and curly hair peeping out from under a black derby hat.

  His tweed clothes were rich, and a gold encased elk’s tooth, with huge diamond in the tip of the tooth, swung from a massive chain on his vest, His face was pale with the paleness of one who smoked far too many cigars; it was lined, too, with the lines of one who had sat in too many troublesome late-houred political meetings.

  “I’ll take it, Vado,” he was grunting. “But don’t bother to wrap it up. For I’m hopping in my car outside—and going home for the day.”

  “Okay, Mayor—and no charge!—it’s on the house—but—just a minute, Mayor. Been having these—er—headaches long?”

  “Some time. Though this one, plainly, is from a Welsh rarebit I ate day before yesterday. And—but why do you ask?” The mayor’s voice was grumpy, as one whose intimate physiology had been pried into!

  “We-ell—I think I would have my headaches looked into by a doctor, for headaches, Mayor, are symptomatic of so many things. A fact! And if your doctor says there’s no organic trouble at the base of them —well— now I know you’ll laugh—”

  “I won’t laugh. What in hell is there in Life to laugh at, anyway? What is it you suggest?”

  “Well—that before drenching your system with acetanilid—which is in all headache remedies—and maybe putting your heart permanently on the blink—you see what a psychotherapeutist can do.”

  Mr. Wainright, now passing a nickel over the wicket, smiled faintly at those words. Considering who and what he was about to call up!

  “One of those ducks,” grunted Mayor Sweeney, “who talk pain away?—but from nuts only? Hell, Vado, he couldn’t talk this headache of mine away—if for no other reason than that I’m sane—not just 100 per cent sane, Vado, but 101.333 per cent!” Mr. Wainwright, now obtaining his slug, could not but help note the drugstore proprietor frowning puzzledly as one who knew—exactly as did Mr. Wainwright himself!—that he who is too downright convinced of his own sanity is, almost always, in danger. “I’ll stick to your Vado’s Knockit,” the Mayor was continuing, pocketing the bottle. “Or Bromo Seltzer. All right, Vado. Thanks for the bottle—and I’ll send you over a pair of tickets tomorrow for the Policeman’s Benefit.” And Chicago’s “top man” was going out the door, on his way home to treat his headache with Vado’s Knockit, and, perhaps, to brag to his own wife that he was 101.333 per cent sane. Though at this juncture of matters Mr. Wainwright, actually grinning at the paradoxical concept of a man being more sane than sane!—101.333 per cent so!—had secured a slug, and was now entering a telephone booth. Where, looking up a number, he dialed it.

  A girl’s voice answered.

  “I want,” he said, “to speak to Dr. Gregor Miranovski, the hypnoti—that is, hypnotic therapeutist—on a very very serious matt—”

  “Dr. Miranovski,” said a girl’s voice, “is out of town.”

  “Thank—you!” He hung up. “Well, he’s out, all right.

  So I may be able to use him. If I can pull an imitation of him—on the phone.”

  Now, outside on the sidewalk again, a cab drew up in response to his signal.

  “The River,” he told the driver simply.

  The driver looked astounded. As he had a right to be, at anybody desiring to ride such a short distance. But philo­sophical where strange fares were involved, he jerked his meter, and with a lurch that flattened his fare against the cushions, sped riverward.

  At the Clark Street bridge, Mr. Wainwright climbed blithely out, paying off the taximeter “pull” of 25 cents with a silver half-dollar from which he waved back the change.

  Down the stone stairs of Wacker Drive Mr. Wainwright hastily made his way, to, in fact, the concrete embankment along the river. A diver was working midway of the block between Clark Street and Dearborn Street, the cranks of his air machine being turned by two laborers.

  A small group of loungers were looking on from the actual embankment—and a larger group from the Upper Drive level.

  The young man frowned.

  This large and generous audience was going to complicate exceedingly what he now must do—and do quickly.

  Slowly he walked to where the diver was submerged.

  But past and on. And he was just about halfway between the diver’s position and Dearborn Street—at Piling 47, to be exact, in view of the black numbers stencilled on it—when the lucky break of breaks came.

  Lucky, that is, for this particular young man.

  For a great, clumsy helicopter was bearing clutteringly down on the region, from the southeast, its double horizontal wings making a terrific roar. It was only a few hundred feet above river and street. The bridges, at both ends of this block, became suddenly thick with people—arrested, in motion. Streetcars stopped. And automobiles also on the drive above. Everybody in the entire vicinity—except one—raised his chin and faced the sky.

  That one exception was the diver, working far down the water’s surface.

  And perhaps even he too looked upward. Who knows? At which, Mr. Wainwright, with a chuckle, just tore off the end of his paper wrapping—tilted his package—and the sledge within slid forth into the silent water with
a slight splash—and was gone instantly. The while the helicopter let out a great final roar of its blades which brought all chins a millimeter higher.

  And before it was drifting away to the west—and traffic was miraculously resumed again—Mr. Wainwright was again climbing into a cab on the Upper Drive level at Dearborn Street.

  “Clark and Washington Streets,” he said, naming the very point where, but a fraction of an hour before, he had read that story detailing the catastrophic fall of one J. D., safe burglar, and had, himself, evolved a great radical idea in connection therewith!

  His face was a bit thoughtful now, as he walked rapidly back toward the Klondike Building.

  He stopped, however, at the little watch-repair shop where he had ordered the watch engraved.

  And it was ready! Had been ready no doubt for 5 minutes.

  The “I. V.” had been neatly converted into a “P. W.”—and the fresh cuts had been darkened with some acid.

  “Oke,” Mr. Wainwright said briefly, and laid down 2 dollars.

  And departed.

  Again entering the Klondike Building.

  And again taking the stairs.

  And again striking Floor 8 in one minute.

  Where again he repaired to the door of 806.

  Nobody was in the hall. With quite supreme confidence, he slipped the master key he had purchased into the Police Padlock. It opened easily—exactly as he had known it would! He slipped it off and into his side coat pocket. And shoving the door slightly inward, and half turning, he slipped back­ward into the room—thus assuring himself that nobody in the hall was seeing this maneuver.

  But as he turned about, after quietly shoving the door to, he gave a start.

  Not, however, because anyone was in the room, coolly surveying his entrance—nor even looking in from the one window, since that latter contingency was one quite impos­sible, the window fronting only on a blank, ugly windowless wall, less than five feet from it. Neither, moreover, did he give a start because of the old safe across the room, with its door swung wide open—and several bits of gleaming dial on the floor. Nor at the old clock, awry on the wall. Nor at the old desk. Nor at the old leather couch—or rather, should it per­haps be said, the several feet thereof which struck emptily out from a black burlap-covered folding screen.

  But because, on the floor, lay a dead man! A dead man, in the striped overalls and jumper of a janitor and night watch­man. And his face was covered with a blue bandanna handkerchief that presumably had been his own.

  “Good—grief!” said Mr. Wainwright, to whom a mere corpse was nothing at all. For many were the corpses—women, of course—that he had prettied up with rouge and lipstick for his good friend, Gideon Arkwright, the North Avenue undertaker. “I certainly inferred,” he commented, to himself, scratching his chin, “that the body had been removed elsewhere. For—now what the devil did that story say on that? Oh yes!—that the body had been ‘left all morning exactly where ’twas found.’ ‘All morning’ is right!—plus a piece of ‘afternoon’ thrown in! He nodded sagely. “One shrewd piece of language, that ‘all morning’—and struck in there like a plum to make others think as P. Wainwright, Esquire—and keep curiosity seekers away. Well, my profit, that’s all.”

  And he gave a philosophical shrug of his shoulders.

  And proceeded to business.

  Though not without first reading a white card that had been placed on the inside of the door he had just closed, with 4 thumbtacks. It bore, on its top, the engraved words:

  CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT

  and underneath it, in handwriting, and signed, was the notice:

  This room completely inspected by me at 8:30 a.m. October 23 by special request of State’s Attorney Louis J. Vann, and notes and camera shots made of all vital and essential criminological residua.

  Rufus Scott,

  Inspector, Burglary Division,

  Chicago Detective Bureau.

  Mr. Wainwright smiled dolefully. “Then a few ‘post-crime’ ‘traces’ oughtn’t to hurt matters in the least!”

  And apparently acting on which, he crossed the room quickly to that open safe. Where he drew from his pocket the watch he had just procured. Setting its hands to the hour of 10:43—which it seems the able inspector Scott had, accord­ing to the newsstory, been able to determine as conclusively and absolutely the hour of the crime and the murder—Mr. Wainwright twisted the winder till something in the watch snapped.

  After which, squatting down, he sent the watch sliding—with a slight shuffling noise—back under the safe, the under bottom of which cubicle cleared the floor very narrowly, thanks to the odd manner in which the makers—or perhaps some later secondhand dealers—had appended the wheels, the axles of the latter protruding at points considerably up the sides of the iron box. Mr. Wainwright did not, however, attempt to follow the progress of the watch with his eye, if for no other reason than because of the darkness beneath the safe, but, judging from the smart rap that sounded forth, the watch just hit the wall board and came to a stop.

  Mr. Wainwright now went straight to where an old diploma hung on one wall, a bit higher than an eye could conveniently reach. And here, again, he indulged in a double procedure. The first part of which consisted of rubbing his ten fingertips vigorously in his hair. Which done, he planted them—the whole 10—fingers slightly outstretched—against the painted wall under that diploma.

  And now he stood not further on the order of his going!

  For stepping adroitly over the thing on the floor, he was again at the door through which but three-quarters of a minute before he had entered. And opening which, a few inches, he gave a cautious peep into the hall. In both directions.

  But the hall was clear.

  It was the work of a split second for him to emerge and to slip, back into the eyelets of the bolt, the curved shaft of the open padlock which had been reposing in his side coat pocket. Click! And the padlock was locked.

  Again he took the stairs to the street. Tossing the master padlock key back of a radiator between floors 5 and 4.

  The elevator was not in sight as he came down the last flight, and into the wood-moored foyer.

  And within a minute of having left that 8th floor, he was out again on the sidewalk. And a full 40 feet away, in a westerly direction, though gazing studiedly back of himself. With the result that he could see a yellow taxicab draw up sharply in front of the Klondike Building, and a well-built man in a tweed suit, carrying a leather portfolio, climb out and pay off the driver with some kind of very official-looking tickets. After which, striding forward to the door, the tweed-suited man took up a position at the side of the Klondike Building entrance.

  To some persons, he would have been—in the light of his portfolio!—nothing other than a salesman, waiting some client or customer scheduled to enter, or to leave, the Klondike Building. Not so was he, apparently, to Mr. Wainwright. Who, now standing on the curb, was nodding his head.

  “Soles an inch thick,” the latter was commenting. “And looking as innocent as a cat who’s just swallowed the family parrot. A detective, of course. Put there by the State’s Attorney.” And he gave a tiny chuckle. “Yet why not? Doesn’t the criminal always return to the scene of his crime?” He gave a half-nod. “There’s the spot for my arrest, all right—and the man to make it! And then—then to confess to the murder of Rudol—no, Adolph Reibach! And the theft of that skull. So here goes! And I do hope, by Gracious, I do—that I haven’t slipped up anywhere. Heavens!—to have all this trouble—for nothing!”

  And resolutely he walked toward the Klondike Building, and that innocent-appearing man with the portfolio!

  CHAPTER VI

  “Consultation Only!”

  Elsa Colby was so small—at least as compared to the giant quilt cover which, on its slightly inclined rack, covered almost one wall of her cramped office—and which
office, fortunately for its own size, was never crammed with clients and seldom with even client!—that at times she had to mount a small stubby stepladder stool to ply her skillful needle. The bright red of Elsa’s hair—made even brighter, seemingly, by its contrast with the knitted mouse-grey one-piece dress that she wore—was of the exact color as the great scarlet poppies which lay at each corner of the quilt; her blue eyes were precisely the blue of the pond which lay in its middle—at least of the one experimentally completed ripple on that pond; and the freckles on her face—and most particularly on her nose—were like—but no, they were not like anything on the quilt proper at all, but were like the spattering of brown ink from an angry fountain-pen on a sheet of white paper.

  Her quilt, it might be said, lay exposed in entirety upon its huge rack for the simple reason that it held, here and there, throughout its entire area, certain flecks which must be done in green; and Elsa, having been able to pick up a huge amount of green silk thread—but green only!—at a discount, had to do that color first, and fully, just as independent shoestring movie producers, with little or no money to rent locations or to put up settings, have to complete, in one rented setting, all the scenes for two or more “quickies,”—before negotiating a new setting!

  But though secondhanded the old step-ladder stool was—it had cost only 18 cents on West Madison Street—and rickety as it was to boot, Elsa made quite no strain on it what­soever—for the reason that she was but 90 pounds in weight —95 normally, but the 20-cent meals at the Two Sisters Restaurant were notoriously shy of nutriment!

  It might be said that only in the matter of the lettered door of her tiny front office on the 10th story of the ancient Ulysses S. Grant Building, the latter not a part of Chicago’s Loop, but a barnacle clinging hungrily on the dingy outskirts of that Loop, did Elsa present any “professional front.” Unless, perhaps, one included the special typewriter-desk standing to the right of Elsa’s own desk, with its battered electric typewriter plugged into the wall back of it by a long cord, the machine suggesting that it regularly turned out scores of important legal briefs, and the former that a paid steno­grapher—at some mysterious hours unknown!—held vigil here. To be sure—typewriter desk or no typewriter desk—the row of law books over Elsa’s own desk looked heavy enough to weigh a successful lawyer down. But the typewriter desk itself was one that had been scornfully left behind in that office when Elsa had moved in; the typewriter itself—and which Elsa always affectionately called Old Million-Words-a-Minute—was no other than a most “lucky” purchase at an unclaimed goods sale wherein the auctioneer, a friend of Elsa’s, had put the machine up at auction, in front of her alone, 5 minutes before the auction began; the office itself cost only $9 a month—too much, in fact, for a site in which to do quilt embroidering—and the door of the office read, outside: