The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  He concentrated his gaze on the blotter and bit his lips in his perplexity. Then for the first time he became conscious that the blotter was rather thick — just a wee bit short of being bulky. And on top of this realization an idea smote him with such force that it literally staggered him. He seized the slender steel paper-knife from his desk and inserted it carefully between the tough glazed layer of the blotter and the porous, fibrous layer to which it clung. The two layers split apart easily. He peeled away and in a jiffy caught a glimpse of something crisp in texture and golden-yellow in color. Figures came into view almost at the same time. A second later he had seized the two layers with his hands and stripped them entirely apart, the top one curling up as though in protest at such harsh treatment. And if any doubt had existed in Carson’s mind thus far that Henry Desmond, the dead, had been heard from, and not a joker instead, that doubt was entirely removed. For the rectangular strip of crisp yellow paper carefully concealed between the two layers of the blotter, each pasted only around its respective edges, was a United States Federal Reserve bank note.

  It was of an issue that had been made but a few months before.

  It was payable in gold.

  And it was for twenty thousand dollars.

  CHAPTER VI

  A QUANDARY

  TO CARSON the crisp bright yellow twenty thousand dollar gold note in his fingers seemed for a moment unreal — a vividly colored illusion. As in a daze he uncurled the glazed layer of the blotter which he had peeled away, and in a daze again re-read its brief pointed message:

  But now that the shock of his second discovery began to subside, to Carson’s fuddled mind, still fumbling upon that sensation of the day — the van Twillingham divorce suit — much in the manner of a clumsy basketball player with the unwieldy leather sphere, everything became suddenly clear.

  “Be ready to see me at the usual place, the usual hour,” was the message conveyed to Dolly van Twillingham, granting that Reggie van Twillingham’s much-bruited charges were true, when the form of address given in certain alleged typewritten letters of a business nature to Dolly were spaced out by the supposed sender, Spanginelli. “I cannot be at the appointed place. Watch for next communication,” was the message that Spanginelli was alleged to have conveyed when the innocent-looking signature at the bottom was itself spaced out. And this — this much written-up newspaper sensation — made the entire cryptic contents of the legal-sized envelope almost as clear as day to its recipient; he was now able to interpret it as one might read handwriting upon a wall.

  The blotter had been used as a base for the printed communication in order to both hold and conceal the valuable contents — contents which not only were part of the message but which should assure to a doubting Clifford Carson that the message was indeed genuine. The communication had been printed — Henry Desmond, Carson now recalled, had in days long before Carson’s own time been an apprentice printer while he was studying to become a mechanical engineer in the London Polytechnic — in order to withhold, in case it should fall into some other hands than the rightful recipient, legal evidence that Henry Desmond was alive. Whether there was some motive as yet not come to light back of this super-caution, or whether, for some utterly unfathomable reason, Henry Desmond, knowing that he had been absent and missing seven years and that his legal death was to be declared next Friday, wished that declaration of death to be handed down exactly as was planned by his cousin, Matthias Smock, could not be determined. Did he believe that Marcia and Cary, his two children, were to receive vastly larger sums for his quitclaim than they really were?

  But regarding the deliberately spaced out names of the sender and the addressee. By the aid of the van Twillingham case, the veriest tyro in the accomplishments of Poe could read as he ran. CARSON — spaced with letters well and obviously apart, meant nothing other than “Be ready to see me,” by simply omitting the words supposed to concern the actual supposed place of rendezvous between Dolly van Twillingham and the melancholy baritone. In like manner DESMOND — its letters well separated, cried aloud: “I cannot be with you [yet]. Watch for next communication.”

  With the twenty thousand dollar gold note lying on the desk in front of him, and the message on the glazed surface of the one-time blotter still unrolled in his fingers, Carson’s face grew suddenly thoughtful. There was one more interpretation to be made of the affair — and one which he did not like. Was Henry Desmond involved in some great international crime involving in turn hundreds of thousands of dollars, all in yellow bills of large denominations such as this, and was he perhaps imprisoned by some gang in the region of Hammond, Indiana — held captive to the extent that he had access only to some printing press and a few fonts of type? Was this bill merely one that was smuggled out from hundreds of its fellows — a tiny portion of some great loot?

  But at that hypothesis Carson shook his head. The Englishman who had befriended him in those early years of his life was no crook — he was a man who was honest to the core. A man daring, yes, ingenious, yes, but not a man who would allow himself to participate in an international crime. If he had twenty thousand dollars to send as a bona fide indication of the genuineness of his cryptic message, he must be involved in some sort of a great enterprise with equally great profits, and for some strange reason — a reason which undoubtedly must all come out in the end — was still remaining hidden except to the one person who could interpret his message.

  “Do as you like with the money in your hands for thirty days.” That was a puzzler indeed to Carson, but one thing was clear. It meant that whether this twenty thousand dollar gold bill which had literally dropped from the skies were Marcia’s and Cary’s and his — or his alone for the time stated, the reappearance of Henry Desmond among them, which must take place within thirty days from behind this veil of mystery, would mean the reappearance of a man too late to hold his half interest in the Outer Ravenswood property, worth nearly fifty thousand dollars. And that Henry Desmond hold his interests was vital now. For only too well Carson knew that the father would never suffer the son — a son who had had to grow up both motherless and fatherless — to go for embezzlement to that grim sepulchre of stone and steel in which he himself had spent two bitter years.

  And now the way became clear where before it was beset with doubts and uncertainties. He raised the receiver of his desk phone and at once dialed Ramsey Gordon’s offices in the First National Bank Building. No feminine voice now answered the instrument, for the hour was that at which stenographers in all parts of the Middle West were hurrying home on crowded street cars, L-coaches and subway trains with thoughts of young men and dances hovering through their typewriter-harassed brains. Instead, the old law which says that master works harder than man was again substantiated, for the genial voice of Ramsey Gordon himself came upon the wire after a second ringing over the circuit.

  “Clifford Carson speaking, Mr. Gordon,” Carson explained quickly. “Something most important has occurred with respect to that case I talked to you about just after lunch today, and if it wouldn’t be imposing on you too much by seeing you twice in one business day — ”

  “Just come right over,” said the ever-pleasant Mr. Gordon. “My London trip has piled my desk sky-high with papers and I expect to be in my office all evening — not to mention many other evenings as well. Run in, my boy, whenever it suits you.”

  With which kindly offer ringing pleasantly in his ears, Carson replaced the receiver on the hook, took up his hat, turned out the lights in the office and repaired post-haste to the street. He did not go immediately to the First National Bank building, however, but stopped off in the big new imposing stone structure on Monroe Street near Michigan Avenue which bore the very practical name of the First Chicago Day and Night Bank.

  Stepping up to the window of one of the paying tellers, he passed across the twenty thousand dollar certificate which he took from his leather billfold, buttoned tightly in his breast pocket. One last suspicion hovered in his mind — the sus
picion that perhaps it might be counterfeit. Why this might be he did not know or attempt to explain. But he wished to assure himself definitely upon this point before proceeding further with his plans.

  “This twenty thousand dollar Federal Reserve gold note is part of a particular transaction,” he said to the teller — and truthfully at that, for the transaction was one of give and take! “ — and I want to determine for certain whether it’s genuine.”

  The keen-faced teller took it back to a shelf containing in full view a micrometer calipers, a set of magnifying lenses, and a book of pasted reprints of bills in black and white — evidently something gotten out by the United States Government for the use of banks. He made a careful examination of the crisp yellow certificate, consuming perhaps five minutes. Then from this he turned to a series of typewritten carbon sheets pasted in a crude scrapbook of brown paper; thence to one of the same sheets stuck upon a spindle near by. This done he returned to the grating.

  “Your bank note is O.K.,” he said. He slid it back across the marble ledge. He deftly resumed rolling up some silver quarters into paper cylinders, which occupation Carson’s request had interrupted. He went on talking. “Better always bring any such bills into a bank first before making out any papers or parting with any personal property in exchange for ‘em. While a bill may be genuine, it can be a stolen one as well. And that’s just as bad. We have records of the numbers of all bills of ten thousand dollars or over — counting this twenty thousand dollar issue as well — which have been stolen across the United States for ten years ago to date, and we get reports twice daily from the detective agency which handles this stuff and keeps our records right up to the minute. While yours is all right in that respect — perfectly bona fide — you never can tell when you may be stung badly by accepting such bills.”

  Carson thanked the teller for the service, if not for the advice, which, considering that he was not accustomed to transactions involving bills of large denomination, was of not much utility to him. Replacing the bill in his breast pocket and fastening it securely with a pin, he buttoned up his coat tightly and hurried on to Ramsey Gordon’s.

  He found that gentleman alone in his office, his nose buried in a ponderous legal book, his desk heaped high with papers. It was plain that his work had piled up on him while he had been investigating the musty mysteries of Westminster Abbey, and surveying the Thames from the Black-friar’s Bridge. But he was still the epitome of courtesy, and listened carefully to every word of Carson’s surprising narrative. Then in turn he inspected the printed message, the bill, and lastly the big envelope with its single postmark.

  “And what you specifically want to know first,” he stated finally, “is whether this communication constitutes legal evidence that Henry Desmond is alive?”

  “Yes,” said Carson quickly.

  Ramsey Gordon’s answer was discomfiting however. “Well,” he said slowly, “I am sorry to say that it does not. This factor has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States — that no communication set in type by hand can serve as legal evidence of handwriting. You could not, through that alone, break Smock’s case and prolong the declaration of death another seven years. It is valuable in this way, however. By means of it we can get in the probate court, I feel certain, a single stay next Friday of thirty days — the usual stay in such matters — in which to produce Henry Desmond himself.”

  “Can we get it upon the message alone?” asked Carson desperately, not for an instant forgetting Cary Desmond’s critical plight, nor much less his own predicament with Mrs. Galioto due to arrive in his office in two more days with perhaps a lawyer at her elbow.

  “Lord no!” was the older man’s emphatic retort. “A mere few words printed in type would get us nothing but the suspicion that we were resorting to some fantastic trickery to delay Matthias Smock. No, I refer to the message backed up by the bill itself. The probate court would in all probability issue a thirty-day stay of its decision upon the message and this huge bill which accompanied it — but not on the message alone. Old Judge Deviton is a very ultra-legal jurist, a man who travels by the very letter of the law and the law only, but even he would grant the thirty days on the two pieces of evidence together.”

  Nothing was said for the fraction of a minute, then Ramsey Gordon went on talking. “I speak of a thirty-day delay,” he said, “for the following reason: For some cause, at present effectively hidden from us, Henry Desmond must and must absolutely remain in the background. Whether he knows of the situation confronting his children, there is no telling. But this envelope is postmarked Hammond, Indiana. Hammond is a town which does much of Chicago’s printing, at lower prices on account of the lower Hammond scale of living. If an enlarged photograph were made of this message, bringing out the defects which always exist in the impressions from lead type, and if every printing shop in Hammond were canvassed for a sample of its printing set in this font, one of the defects might turn up on one of the samples, which would be the clue that would lead us to Henry Desmond. That would be a very logical plan of procedure.” He scribbled a name on a tab of paper affixed to his desk, and tore off the top sheet. “If you decide to follow this up, let me give you the name of a good operative. Go see Bill Wiswell, over at Wiswell’s American Detective Agency in Room 808 of the Hartford Building. He’s usually there from noontime on till late in the evening if he’s not out on a case. He has ears, eyes, patience, a brain and more gall than any human being I ever knew. But what is most important, he has no mouth!”

  Carson tucked the slip of paper away. He sat thoughtfully in his chair for a moment longer. Then realizing that he was absorbing minutes which were highly valuable to the other man he politely arose. “I see. I’m grateful to you for this additional advice, Mr. Gordon. Also the name of this operative. And I’ll not take up any more of your time.” He pinned the bill once more to the inside of his breastpocket, and buttoned his coat upon it as before.

  Ramsey Gordon stood up. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Glad to be of assistance.”

  Down on Dearborn Street, Carson stood pondering over the strange situation with which he was confronted. Past and beyond him six o’clock office workers hurried in all directions to board their homegoing cars, and those same cars clanged incessantly trying to extricate themselves from tangles of automobiles and taxicabs. But to the noise and confusion Carson was oblivious, concentrating only on the problem in hand. True, he might by some extreme subterfuge further delay either settlement or explanation with Mrs. Galioto the coming Thursday — somehow for a day or two, at least — but to hold the twenty thousand dollar gold note until Friday, when the hearing concerning Henry Desmond’s legal death should take place in the probate court, meant that it could not be utilized at all to save Cary Desmond. To utilize it now — at least by tomorrow morning — for the restoration of Cary Desmond’s pilfered ninety-six hundred dollars and the saving of that young man meant that next Friday Henry Desmond’s death would be legally assured, due to lack of evidence that he was alive. And the handing down of this official declaration in turn meant that Matthias Smock became full possessor, full owner, of the valuable Outer Ravenswood tract. But it did not mean that Matthias Smock could immediately cash in on his acquired title, for Carson knew that with the developments of this late afternoon neither Marcia nor Cary must let loose of their father’s quitclaim. Thus, by this simple procedure, the sale of the Outer Ravenswood tract in toto to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans who were anxiously reaching out for it, would be blocked. The big real estate developers would be forced to close with the piece upon which they already held an expiring option, and thus the immediate danger would be removed from the case. Indeed, everything was coming the way of Marcia and Cary and their father but time. And time it was which was now precious, thanks to Cary’s luckless flights in the copper field.

  And Thursday, Carson reflected, while it was to bring Mrs. Galioto down on his heels, also introduced a new feature — a feature which was not
devoid of possibilities. That was the matter of Reggie van Twillingham’s offer of twenty-five thousand dollars for an idea — an idea for a man-trapping safe. True, there would be a score — two score of applicants for Reggie van Twillingham’s prize — and no telling what ideas would be submitted nor which would satisfy the eccentric multimillionaire. But there was no reason why Cary Desmond’s idea should not rank equally high with any of them. Indeed, the boy should have been an inventor instead of a prosaic bank teller. He was a square peg in a round hole. But all this was idle thinking, and the lights of Chicago’s downtown section were coming on one by one. The thing to do now was to consider his proposed visit to Smock himself.

  Carson had been known in college as “Most-any-bloody-thing-can-be-done-Carson,” on account of his blindness towards the impossibility of achieving any difficult objective. His college mates had laughed at him more than once, but in spite of this and also of the fact that many times he had tackled a quite impossible situation and in due course withdrawn vanquished, that trait of character — that “damphool optimism” as his chum had called it — always stood pre-eminently a part of his very nature. And it was for this reason that he now stood with his back to the First National Bank Building preparing to call on Matthias Smock; and likewise for this reason that he had a hazy notion in his mind that somehow — some way — he might compel or induce Smock to hold back on the declaration of death which would oust Henry Desmond from ownership in the Outer Ravenswood tract.