The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  So he went first into a nearby cigar store where, in the privacy of the telephone booth, he rang the Bradley Arms, the fashionable building of bachelor apartments on Oak Street where Cary Desmond had preferred to reside rather than with his own sister and grandfather. He caught that young man, and he detected in his voice a strange irregularity which made him know full well that Cary Desmond was drinking something a good deal stronger than water, and was bringing partial forgetfulness to himself on his last free day among men.

  “Cary, this is Cliff,” he told the other hurriedly. “Be at my rooms on Scott Street at nine o’clock without fail. Chuck your theatre. Also, don’t drink any more of that moonshine. I’ve found a complete way out for you — and that means that I come out with clean skirts too. And together we’ll work out the exact details of how to fix up your case — also mine. Above all, do not sign any quitclaim of your own tonight in case any lawyer brings one to your rooms.”

  Cary hiccoughed, and then replied in a voice that was still fairly steady. “Righto, old boy. I knew you’d help poor Cary. I do’ know what it’s all about, but I’ll be there, Cliff. I’ll tear up m’ ticket to the show. I’ll be there, Cliff. Don’t fear.”

  Emerging from the cigar store, Carson went north a block to the Hartford Building whose low narrow entrance was sandwiched in among shops of various sorts. To the eighth floor he repaired, and was shortly entering the door of the Wiswell Detective Agency. A short stocky little man of about forty years of age with flaming red hair and blue eyes, a man of undoubted Irish extraction who looked indubitably as though he had the audacity of the very devil, was seated at a battered desk, smoking a big black cigar, and apparently thinking intently upon some problem. Carson dropped into a rickety chair by the desk, and the smoker turned a pair of quizzical, questioning eyes upon him, waiting, however, for the other to speak.

  “Carson is my name,” the younger man explained briefly. “Mr. Ramsey Gordon sent me to you. I want something done in the way of special investigation.” He took from his pocket the curled-up glazed layer of the blotter. “Mr. Gordon suggests that we have an enlarged photograph made of this piece of typesetting to bring out all the type defects; and then in turn to get specimens of typesetting from every shop in Hammond, Indiana, and to compare them in order to find out in which one this was set. After that — well — that’s the first step. More than this I’m not in a position to divulge as yet.”

  Mr. Bill Wiswell inspected the curled-up paper. “Come from a Hammond printshop, did it?” he asked pointedly.

  “Presumably so,” replied Carson, “but not certain. All we can do is to investigate in that field.”

  Mr. Bill Wiswell showed himself a man of remarkably few words. He rose from his creaking swivel chair, and with the piece of curled-up printing in his hands passed through a door into a room which, as the door swung back from its impact, showed that the adjoining space to which it was a portal held a great mass of paraphernalia scattered around it, including a large camera or two. Indeed, his suite was equipped much as Carson’s own — a very nondescript outer office with a “shop” inside to the nature of which it gave no clue. Mr. Wiswell was gone for five minutes; during his absence a loud “pop” as though of a flashlight sounded into the smaller office, a bit of acrid smoke rolled over the door, and then he reappeared as abruptly as he had left. He handed back the glazed layer of paper.

  “I’ll have a full report for you sometime around Thursday. I’ll ring you when it’s completed. My time will be twenty-five dollars a day. ?. K.?”

  Carson rose. “Quite. And I must say you’re certainly a quick worker,” he added.

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Wiswell modestly. “Hammond directory” — he pointed his thumb towards his shop — ”in there gives thirty-one printshops. Clean ‘em all up by Thursday morning. I’m sure. Wiswell agency appreciates your business — goes after the job. That’s all.” And as Carson turned to the door, he added: “Oh, by the way, there’s a nick in the first ? of that setting, also a scratch across the second O; one barb broken off of the fifth S. Very simple.” He yawned.

  Fortified by a meal at a cafeteria, eaten with considerable more cheerfulness than he had anticipated a couple of hours ago, Carson stopped off at the telephone directory near the doorway, looked up the name and address of Matthias Smock, and with that ‘damphool optimism” now soaring precariously high on account of the caffeine in the cup of coffee he had drunk, signalled a taxi and gave the directions which would land him at Mr. Smock’s home residence at 3549 Franklin Boulevard.

  It was seven-thirty in the evening when he reached the Smock home. It proved to be, exactly as Ramsey Gordon had told him, a leased one, for a to-rent sign had been erected in the front yard. Evidently Smock was about to change abodes. It was a handsome residence, and its rental must have been a good penny. Set far back of a pretty lawn, its front made of great grey granite blocks whose architecture was broken by curved glass windows of the most expensive kind, it was a place which only a man of extensive income could maintain. A pair of beautiful doors comprised of pieces of crystal joined together by lead strips, the crystal composing the doors entirely from top to bottom, cast varicolored reflections on a white tiled entrance at the top of a set of greystone steps. But undaunted by this evidence of opulence, Carson strode up those steps and pushed the electric button at the top. A maid servant in tight-fitting black dress, with lace cap and apron, answered the door.

  “I would like to speak to Mr. Matthias Smock,” Carson said.

  CHAPTER VII

  MR. SMOCK RECEIVES

  THE maid surveyed Carson a bit inquiringly.

  “What is the name, sir?” she asked parrot-like. “And the business?”

  Carson allowed himself the shadow of a smile as he handed her his card which would tell Mr. Smock quite nothing of his mission there. In a second the maid was back, and leading him through a gorgeous hall with great thick velvety rugs and carved banister, conducted him into a library at the further end.

  In this room, furnished with massive leather furniture and a mahogany desk, but seated just now on an ornate hand-carved radio stool before a great elegant televisic radio cabinet of a make costing, as Carson knew, close on to a thousand dollars, sat a man smoking an apparently after-dinner cigar and adjusting the micrometer dial of a hidden spanning disk whose whirling spiral points were even now fused into a pair of comic negro faces, one with wide white collar and flowing tie, the other with derby hat and checkered vest and coat. The man at the cabinet stared coldly at Carson from his round pious eyes framed in great round glasses, and indicated — by a nod at the cabinet and a gesture towards a close-by leather chair of stiffly uncomfortable construction, for his visitor to take a seat — that he was busy at his hobby. And Carson, dropping down into the proffered chair, half listening to the negro patter coming in through the magnificent clear speaker, curiously surveyed the man who was thus amusing himself. The latter’s hair was a trifle thin on top and parted in the middle; the nearly round face was smooth-shaven and unctuous, the hands rather fat and pudgy. The lips were thin, hardly even red, and an artist mixing pigments for those features and the blue orbs above them would have used the coldest and chilliest colors on his palette. “Just a moment, young man,” he was saying, “I never like to miss Ham and Abner. They’re just finishing up for tonight.”

  Which they were. For Abner, were one to judge from the lips that, on the brightly illuminated screen, moved in synchronism with the clear words coming from the loud speaker, was addressing Ham, and he was saying, in a melodious negro voice:

  “Don’ make no diff’unce, Ham. Ah tells you ain’ no man evah a’vertise f’r no snek less’n dat snek is a tri’k snek w’at do dances — an’ sich like.”

  “Hm,” said Ham, in a deep, raucous, belligerent voice. “Whoevvah hu’d uh a snek w’at dance?”

  “Go on, niggah, ain’ you nevah hu’d o’ de snek dance?”

  “‘Cose Ah is. I’s ejjicated. But it tain’t
dataway ‘tall. Read dat ad again — no — don’ nevah min’ readin’ it. I ‘members it. Dat man wo’t advuhtise — he’s a puffessor. Kind a man wot runs de zoo in one o’ dem collitches. Well, Abner, kain’ you see it now? Dat snek is de las’ of its breed — you evah huh’d o’ de las’ of de Mohicans, Abnah? An’ if’n dis perfessor don’ git dat snek, Abnah, some lady snek ain’ evah goin’ to complete huh love life.”

  “Huh! Snekkses can ma’hy oder kin’ sneks. Dey don’ gotta mah’y in de same tribe, do dey?”

  “Well if dey don’t, what does you git fo’ young sneks? You gits reptiles, Abnah — reptiles! Dat’s ‘xactly wo’t comes when two sneks mahies out o’ each oder’s fambly.”

  There was a pause, and then Ham suddenly spoke again:

  “Abnah, ah’s got a won’erful idea. Lessen us go hunt dis yeah snek. We gits a thousan’ bucks if we fin’s him.”

  “Weah us hunt? Dat snek been makin’ his feetses move some.”

  “Feetses! An’ you talkin’ ‘bout snek’s feetses? Don’ you know sneks ain’ got no feetses? If dey had, dey’d waste all de time dey got liftin’ ‘em up an’ puttin’ ‘em down. Dey ain’ got no feetses.”

  “Aint heh? How dey moves so fas’ den?”

  “You is, Abnah, de mos’ ignuntest man Ah eber imfronted on de subjec’ o’ veg’table life. A snek he lays hisself down and cu’ls hisself up in a figgah S — S, de fo’ty-fo’th lettah in de anphambelt, see?”

  “Yeah? An’ what good de S do him, I ax?”

  “Den he all fix to slither. See? Dat snek he can slither dataway fass’er dan any feetses evah made.”

  “Den you means to say, Ham, if Ah lays me down on de sidewalk like a figgah G — ”

  “S, Abnah. Gotta be a S. Iff’n you wrop youse’f in a buhlap sack, an’ tie it aroun’ you neck, an’ lay youse’f down on de sidewalk, and commence slitha’in’, man, you is goin’ to hab to watch dem traffic lights hahd when you flies ‘cross de crossin’s.”

  “Hm. I goin’ to mek dat ‘speriment. Sound halfway reas’nble at dat. Don’ know iff’n Ah kin get me into a figgah S. But Ah try, anyway.”

  “Yeah? Well you des pick you out a Sunday w’en de traffic ain’ heaby. Hosses don’ perk up none to no niggah slitha’in’ ‘long de sidewalk, I can tol’ you dat. De question now, do’, is us gotta git aftah dis ‘ticulah snek.”

  “Well, Ah axes ag’in, weah us gon’ hunt?”

  “Why, we go fus’ to de Uniung Station. You play one o’ dem sweet chunes soft-like on your Jews-harp. Dat snek’ll come out. We cotch him. Mebbe, Abnah, we goes into de business. Ab an’ Ham, snek cotchers. Go on, niggah, try out dat Jews-harp o’ yourn fo’ we leaves fo’ de Uniung Station.”

  With which invitation the televisic figure representing the squat-faced Abner pulled from his vest pocket a tiny bowed instrument and applying it to his shiny white teeth, proceeded to draw from it a second later the sweetest of tones, in an old Southern Dixie melody, tones which came clear and bell-like through the loud speaker as he twanged away at the prong of the instrument. With the finishing of the rendition, the figure Ham looked at a gargantuan brassy watch, as large as an alarm clock, which he extricated from a special breast pocket made in his vest.

  “Soun’s fus’ rate to me,” he commented, business-like. “Us call dat de ‘Slitha’in’ Blues.’ So come on. We got to huh’y! Sneks retiahs uhly to bed. Wait — anny mo’ ads tonight? No? Den le’s go.” With which the two figures bowed, the illuminated screen went black as the particular frequency on which the visual part of the machine was operating was turned off at the broadcasting station, and the announcer’s voice, traveling on the accompanying frequency, came on the speaker announcing: “Abner and Ham, reading the ads, over WXOY. Every night at this hour.”

  The man at the instrument turned off the reception entirely. He rose from his stool. “Not very good tonight,” he commented sadly. “Too impromptu, I guess. Some nights those fellows are screamingly funny, but they have their forced days.” He took a chair. “And what did you wish to see me about, young man?”

  With which invitation he deposited his cigar on a nearby ash tray, folded his hands piously over his white stiffly starched vest and waited.

  “Mr. Smock,” Carson began, “I am interested in a certain way in the former Rocky Ridge tract owned in non-individually-transferable joint-tenancy by yourself and Mr. Henry Desmond, formerly of Chicago.”

  The human iceberg across from him appeared to thaw a bit, and a crafty smile crept into the corners of its thin lips. “I see. I presume you are here to make an offer on it. Henry Desmond, as you know, is dead. I shall have complete title Friday morning when the probate court hands down its official declaration of his death. What is your offer? Prior to that time it cannot be sold, except that — ” He paused.

  Carson shook his head slowly. “Well, Mr. Smock, to be exact, I am not interested in the Outer Ravenswood tract as a purchaser. I am, to be frank with you, a foster-son of Henry Desmond’s — and in addition to this I am engaged to marry his daughter, Miss Marcia Desmond.”

  A fear — a sudden tightening of the thin lips — forced itself to the face of Matthias Smock, the money lender. “You — you — were legally adopted by Henry Desmond?” he managed to utter in a hurt and incredulous tone. “You — ” He stopped. He passed a pudgy hand over his forehead. It was plain that consternation had come to him — that he had perceived immediately some sort of flaw in his plans to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans. He had made no negotiations toward purchasing the rights of this third and adopted child in Henry Desmond’s quitclaim.

  “No,” said Carson finally, unwilling to put this pious-looking pillar of financial astuteness at his ease, but realizing that he must perforce adhere to the facts. “I was not legally adopted.”

  The smile of satisfaction and relief which came to Smock’s lips showed only too plainly what a shock the first information had caused him. “Then what is it you want?” he asked, his voice more gelid than ever.

  “I dropped in,” Carson declared amicably, “to see whether we could not get together on some arrangement regarding the quitclaim on that Outer Ravenswood tract which would be more advantageous to Marcia and Cary Desmond than the present one. There has been offered by you, I believe, the sum of two thousand dollars for Mr. Desmond’s quitclaim — a thousand apiece for each of his two children. It strikes me that this is manifestly illiberal. I do not see why the situation does not call for at least fifty percent of the selling price to be paid to them in exchange for that paper.”

  Smock laughed harshly. “You have a strange idea of the situation then, young man. If you know anything about law — particularly the form of ownership known as joint-tenancy — you ought to know that survivor takes all. Why is it incumbent on me, if I may ask, to pay over to Henry Desmond’s relatives whom I hardly know, part of what he forfeits by dying?”

  “But of course,” ventured Carson politely, “we don’t really know that he is dead.”

  “Pish!” Smock waved away the suggestion with an impatient gesture of his hand. “There isn’t a doubt in the world that the body of that man found floating in the Drainage Canal shortly after Henry’s escape from Joliet was his body. Henry Desmond is dead, and I should by rights have had ownership seven years ago.” He took up the cudgel which Carson had, courteously enough, to be sure, thrown down to him. “But why, I ask you, should I pay over to outsiders any part of what comes legally to me?”

  “For the reason,” was Carson’s prompt reply, “that there appears to be a moral question involved. If I am not mistaken, Henry Desmond, at the time you went under an operation some seven years or more ago, protected your wife by sending you a special delivery letter containing a paper giving her all of your rights in the event of your death. Being the co-holder with you, he had a legal right to perpetuate your rights in her, something that you yourself could not legally do for her in a non-individually-transferable ownership such as this was. He was not com
pelled, either, to do this, and most men would have grasped the opportunity of perhaps getting full ownership of that little tract of scrub land, worth two thousand dollars anyway.”

  “I never saw such a letter as you describe,” said Smock gruffly, his round face betraying by its flood of color which reached even the ears that not only had he seen such a letter, but that he undoubtedly had it locked safely away today.

  “Yet I did,” responded the younger man quietly, “for I was visiting him in the prison the day it was written, and I myself mailed it for him in a Joliet mailbox.”

  An awkward silence filled the room. Smock swallowed audibly once or twice. “Well, I know nothing about it,” he said. He made haste to get off the subject of the letter. “If Henry Desmond was so anxious to legally protect each other’s heirs against that precarious joint-tenancy, why didn’t he transfer that property with me over to simple joint-ownership before he died? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “The reason, so it appears to me, is self-evident, Mr. Smock,” was Carson’s retort. “Because he was in the penitentiary unjustly; because he found an opportunity to escape; and, once escaped, it meant that if he ever showed up again he must go back to what was literally hell to him. Prior to his flight he drew up one paper for his children — a quitclaim in your favor on that old proposed twenty-five hundred dollar deal — a quitclaim for which presumably you would have paid each of his children one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars if the deal had materialized. I do not see how he could enter into the drawing up of any legal papers with you after he became a fugitive from the law.”