“How?” he repeated, stupidly, like a man balked—by incontrovertible facts he had just that moment heard—from using some contravention of those very facts to explain something. “How?” he repeated again, now like a man maneuvering for time to think. “Why—why—” he stammered, “I—I—”
His words were interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone in front of Elsa.
She drew it over with a sigh. If only it hadn’t rung, she might—so she knew from past experience—have run her uncle into a corner. For, despite all the surprising things she had learned about him today from Aunt Linda—things hitherto absolutely unknown to her—she did know, and always had known, that he was a man who could never think up adequate answers, when pressed to explain something unexplainable on the spot—and on the second! And now—now, while she was taking care of this confounded call, he would probably be building up a quite watertight explanation of how he had heard what he claimed to have heard. She was tempted, in fact, to let the phone ring—and pursue her uncle relentlessly into the corner where manifestly she had him; but, on the other hand, this ring might be a message connected with this very case—and one, even so fortuitous for her position in it that Mr. Silas Moffit, before he left, would be looking as black as the umbrella he carried. Indeed, optimist that she was, far down at heart, Elsa just knew she was going to hear something good!
“Hello?” she said, hopefully.
CHAPTER XIX
Concerning Animated Mummies!—Confessions!—Folding Screens!—And Whatnot!
The man’s voice that answered the phone was one that was faintly—very faintly familiar to Elsa Colby.
“Is this Elsa Colby?” it asked.
“Yes. Speaking.”
“Well, Elsa, this—this is Art Kelgrave. You know? Of the—”
“Sure, Art. Of the Detective Bureau Narcotics Squad. Now don’t tell me you’re seeking to reach some coke-head through my vast criminal clientele—”
“Well, I’m not calling you up, Elsa, about coke-heads—narcotics—or anything else like that. But since you’re bringing the point up yourself, if you do by any chance have a possible lead—through any possible coke-head client of yours—to Eustaqua Brusbriuante, known to us N. Squad as ‘Madame End-of-the-Road,’ I do have something of value and interest to impart to the dame.”
“Who is—just who?” Elsa asked businesslike. And exactly as one who had at least a dozen clients with vast strings into the Underworld. For work could come to one, sometimes, via the Detective Bureau as well as the Underworld! And she proceeded to lie gracefully in that direction. “I have got a coke-head client, Art, an—an ‘allrounder’ who messes in with all the narcotics, and has a finger, in a manner of speaking, on every other narcotic user in town. So—”
Art Kelgrave appeared to be impressed.
“You don’t say, Elsa? Most of ’em don’t know anything except the location of the single joint where they get their dreams. Well, since you have got an ‘all-rounder’ and maybe therefore can do us Narcotic Squad a slight favor!—I might just say that Eustaqua’s the owner of that southwestside marijuana smoking-flat we raided last night. Which story you evidently didn’t see. Though no wonder, since only the Herald carried it. Filipino woman, of course.”
“And exotic as hell,” said Elsa jealously. And grew even more jealous with her own use of the word. For the word ‘exotic’ always infuriated her to the point of frantic envy.
Kelgrave chuckled. And showed by his answer that he knew what the word meant. Indeed, his answer showed him to be what Elsa already knew him to be a far more than ordinarily intelligent Detective Bureau operative.
“Well, if you think, Elsa,” he said, chuckling again, “that a little animated mummy, with a face like a dried-up brown cocoanut—and aged 50 years—is exotic—then maybe she is! If you think peroxided yellow hair on a dame as wrinkled and brown as that, is exotic—you’re welcome! Though I guess she was all of that, maybe, when she came to London 30 years ago as only daughter of the Philippine Islands envoy. Oh, yes—this is one dame at the end of life’s road, Elsa, that we have full ‘history’ on! She probably was exotic and beautiful as hell when she married Sir Gordon Haynes-Arlegraves—and probably just as much so when she was divorced by him a month later because she was found in bed with his nigger chauffeur. She probably was still plenty exotic for the next few years, while she was a secret agent in London, used to trap Asiatic envoys—which is how she managed to be able to run a gambling room, without molestation from Scotland Yard, in Mayfair. But after that—write your own ticket. Prostitute, next, in Buenos Aires. And then—”
“Hey, wasn’t the—the lady getting a bit old by then?”
“Older, and browner, and ever’thing—yes. Which is probably why she finally came to New York and opened a Negro sporting house in Harlem. From which she dropped—dropped, I said, Elsa, and not riz!—to boosting goods from department stores in Cleveland. And then to being a booker of gals, right here in Chi, for nude dancing—at stags. It seems, Elsa, she got a $25 fee for the providing of a gal to dance in the nude—while the gal, generally hungry, got only five bucks.”
“Big profits, heh? And now—”
“And now—and that’s why we call her ‘Madame End-of-the-Road.’ For her road has been a wild colorful affair—only the end’s not so good. For she’s been reduced at last to keeping a marijuana smoking flat—you know?—where people can come and inhale the Mexican weed? But we smoked her out last night, from her place on Kedzie Avenue and Pershing Road. Thanks to getting a lead to her joint from a Mex farmer out on the Calumet River in South Chicago, snatched for shoving some queer, and who was growing all the weed for her. We even found a roster of over 400 marijuana addicts in Chi, in the handwriting of old Manuel Sanchez who’s just starting to serve 5 in Joliet for manslaughter.”
“Enterprising, heh?” Elsa commented, again a little envious of those rare characters who could start earning money on nothing. “A field of weeds—a roster of names—and the lady opens up a luxurious palais de dreams.”
“Luxurious—did I hear you say, Elsa? Ever see a marijuana smoking-flat? I thought not! Well hers was the drabest we have encountered. No carpets whatsoever. The furniture 50 years old. As old as her, in fact. Nothing matching anything else any more than her peroxided hair matches her monkeyface. The electric bulbs almost burnt out. Though, baby!—what a place she had all for herself—back of the flat, and separated from it by a passageway. Two rooms furnished like—like—well, for the sultan of Turkey’s own fa-vor-ite! Canopied bed. Thick rug—baby!—I’d like to live in ’em myself. Except that our axes have cut that rug and that bed pretty well up now. Anyway, ’twas those particular quarters why we didn’t get her. And why—in a sense, Elsa—I’m dribbling all this to you now. For they had entrance on another street entirely—Pershing Road, in fact—and so, when we came in by the flat door—on Kedzie Avenue—she went out—by her private quarters door!”
“And so you want me to relay the party some word for you?” asked Elsa, as businesslike as possible. “Which is—but why don’t you contact her landlord? The owners? Maybe—”
“The ‘landlord’ in this case happens to be a southwestside real-estate renting firm who take all and full responsibility for the renting of the two sets of quarters. From the way they’re ‘fronting’ for the owners, I’d say the owners are probably Negroes, and dare not be revealed as renting to the dope trade. Maybe the owners knew what the premises were being used for—maybe they didn’t. But we can’t padlock the place anyway for just one violation, and—”
“No, hardly. And—”
“And,” Kelgrave went on, “far as trying to run Madame End-of-the-Road down through them, why bother?—when we have an ‘in’ with famous criminal attorneys like yourself—with a couple of dozen ‘all-rounders’ among your clients?”
“Yes, why,” echoed Elsa troubledly—having no “allro
unders” in her almost clientless clientele. “Well—you want me to pass—that is, to try to pass some word—through my ‘all-rounder’—but just—just what is it?” Elsa felt that she was at least partly keeping up her bluff at being somebody!
“Well just, Elsa, that if she’ll clear out of Chi within 24 hours—and stay out!—we’ll call it quits. Our evidence on that raid is more or less rickety anyway—for the marijuana cigarettes in use were all tossed onto a lighted grate fire—and all we got was a half-dozen goofy-looking birds who looked like they were living thousands of years in a few seconds.”
“You mean to say,” asked Elsa, incredulously, “that you people down there are giving people like that a complete ‘out,’ if—”
“Yeah, Elsa, we are! We’ve tried everything to knock that game in the head. And now we’re embarked on a new plan: to ‘bargain’ ’em all out of Chi. Catch ’em—raid ’em—and offer ’em 24 hours to get out and stay out. And we’ll bury their history cards—if they’re ‘glaumed’ elsewhere.”
“Well, you sure are optimists down there. For twice as many will come in, as go out. And besides, in some new city, this old crone—”
“Hey—not quite such an old crone, at that. For though she is 50, she—she’s little, remember—and yaller-haired!”—so she looks only 40.”
“Yea,” said Elsa, now the cat, “40—tropical! Well, the party’ll only go hence and hither, and start some new racket in some new city. So—what?”
“So what? Why, that means more work for criminal attorneys like you who can always use more work, I take it?”
“Well,” Elsa said airy-fairily, “we can always squeeze in a little extra work—sure. Well, Art, I’ll pass that kind ‘word’ to my ‘all-rounder’—and maybe ’twill be passed on to its objective—and if that’s all I can do—”
“Wait, Elsa! I didn’t call up on that at all, you know.”
“Oh—you didn’t? Yes, come to think of it, you did specify that. Well—what—well, what can I do for you then, Art?”
“Well, Elsa—” Art Kelgrave’s voice now became exceedingly troubled. “—you can’t do anything for me—outside of maybe helping to slide the info to that nut-brown monstrosity with the cocoanut face, and the bleached hair, to get the hell out of town—but maybe I can do something for you. Maybe keep you from lying down on what’s maybe the most important job in your young life. I dunno!”
“What—what do you mean, Art?”
“Well—” Plainly the man on the other end of the wire was troubled indeed. “Elsa, I feel that because of the friendship between us, I ought to tell you something; and yet, if you use the information wrongly, I’d—I’d get terribly in Dutch with Mr. Vann.”
“Well is it something, Art, concerning his case—against John Doe?”
“No, Elsa, I don’t know anything about his case against your client. Other than, maybe, just that Professor Clark S. W. Adgate, the foremost criminologist in all America—at least so we in the Department think!—is to testify—for the State. I do know, though, that you were appointed counsel for the defense for Doe—for that info, plus also that about Clark Adgate—was dropped downstairs, a while back, by Leo Kilgallon—whilst we were engaged on—on another matter. And it’s because of knowing that you, Elsa, caught this razzberry of a case—with people like Adgate on the other side—that I’m calling you up now. Had it been any other lawyer though, Elsa, I’d not have been calling. I can assure you of that.”
“Well, Art, you—you do mystify me. And sort of dum—dumfoozle me as well—when you tell me that no less than the great Clark S. W. Adgate himself is to take the stand tonight—on the other side. For of course I know who he is. Whooie! The State sure is out for a conviction—but what can I say, Art? To the matter, I mean, of your having evidently still something else you feel I ought to know! Only that if there’s anything you want to tell me—about anything—it will remain locked in my mind absolutely. I promise you that.”
“You promise that, Elsa?” Art Kelgrave was plainly troubled, and for the first time the deep suspicion came into Elsa’s mind that he was one of those under-cover men whom Vann allegedly had in the police department to watch conditions there.
“Absolutely I promise it, Art. And if it involves my case—for heavens sake, Art, tell me!”
The man on the other end paused a long time.
“Well, such as I can tell you, Elsa,” he said finally, “here it is: Elsa—but listen, have you been in your office for some time?”
“Yes, Art. Oh—for more than a half hour at least.”
“Then you haven’t seen any papers dumped down on the newsstands shortly after 5?”
“No, Art. I haven’t. Why?”
“Well, all of them—all, that is, but the Despatch—are carrying a big front-page story detailing the confession of that crime of which your—your client is charged.”
“By—by him?”
“No, Elsa—by another man.”
“You mean, Art,” Elsa ejaculated delightedly, “the real criminal—has confessed?” Elsa felt a wave of cheer envelop her from head to foot. It was like the first effects of downing a tumblerful of one brandy. There would be no trial tonight now of her client John Doe. The whole thing would be nolle-prossed. And if Silas Moffit had had any Finger in the pie that had been served to her, he was whipsawed now, and—
But Art Kelgrave was speaking.
“Well, Elsa, the fellow who has confessed isn’t guilty at all. I’m in a suite of rooms above the State’s Attorney’s office with the fellow right now—he’s locked in a room 2 rooms from where this phone with outside connections is, till the hour comes for his repudiation to go out on the newsstands.”
“Re—repudiation, Art?” Elsa’s heart dropped down like a plummet, and rapped sharply on her two insteps. “But—but listen, just repudiating, you know—”
“Elsa, old kid, I’ll have to make this brief. I see now I shouldn’t have wasted all that good time talking about Madame Eustaqua End-of-the-Road. Anyway, Elsa, I just want to say that I’d hate to see you get all coked up that your case tonight—yes, I happen to know also that you go to bat tonight—will be a walkaway, with nothing for you to do but maybe argue the judge out of giving your client 30 days for disorderly conduct. The fact is, Elsa, that this fellow close by me here—P. Wainwright is his name—confessed the whole crime—burglary and murder!—just to bust a contract that’s tying him up lock, stock and barrel for 20 years or so.”
“A—a contract, Art? With—with whom?”
“With a radio entertainment firm in New York City. Who are holding him down to writing bedtime animal tales for kids. And he—well, the sap thinks he can do the G-man stuff. You know? But that’s not the point. The point is, Elsa, that he’s not only repudiated the confession—and the repudiation is all signed and sealed—but it can be—will be, in fact—established that three ‘confirmations’ of his confession he sewed into the affair were sewed in after the story came out today in the 2:30 Despatch.”
“After? Still, Art, he might be very cunning—in his repudiating—he may have thought things over, and—”
“No, Elsa. Certain junk he’s sewed into the case has been obtained—all of it—after the story came out. On top of which, his confession has an unseen weak spot in it that—at least to Lou Vann—was bigger than a garage door, and—”
“But—but wait, Art. Just because Lou Vann claims he sees a weak spot in it, doesn’t mean a damned thi—”
“But it does here, though, Elsa,” Kelgrave put in sadly. “For you see this lug—and, incidentally, Elsa, he wears rouge!—a fact!—anyway this lug stated that after he entered Vann’s office last night—and turned on the lights—he crossed the room swiftly till he could see through the black-burlap covered folding screen that partly cut off the old couch. Make out the outlines of the couch, you know, and—”
“Wait! Sinc
e when, Art, is burlap transparent? I never—”
“That’s the whole point, Elsa. It seems this fellow was a burlap clerk in New York once, and worked out an actual formula—multiply the number of feet from which you can make out an object through a sheet of burlap, by x—and you get the weave!”
“I see. Well I learn something new every day. All right. Then burlap is semi-transparent—at certain distances? So what, then?”
“Well, he crossed the room sufficiently—so he claimed—till he could see through the burlap—make out that the couch was empty—that the office girl hadn’t stayed down by some chance, curled up on it, and gone to sleep, and—”
“And if she had? What was he going to do? Was he gatted up?”
“No. I asked him that identical question on the way over to Vann’s office in a cab. With him. He told me that if the girl had been there, he’d have pointed his finger at her through his pocket—tied her up—and, to shut her mouth as to his description and identity, raped her.”
“Whoops, Art! A guy sporting rouge?—raping a gal?—well that’s more cock-eyed than the case of the guy that bit the dog. And so that’s the weak poin—”
“No. It’s only the point where I personally began to to think there was something phoney about the confession.
But the weak point, Elsa, in the ‘burlap’ part of the story is that the back of that folding screen—according to Lou Vann—is covered with at least 4 coats of thick black paint till it’s as opaque as a brick wall. For Vann says he used to sneak over there sometimes, during days—and cop a snooze back of it. Anyway, it seems, you can’t any more look through that screen than you could into the gizzards of a battleship—from the waterline. Positively the only place where one could, Vann told us—and the fact moreover is known only, Vann said, to himself and his office-girl—is a hole, considerably and far above even the outlines of the couch itself, where he had recently successfully tried out the sharpness of that stiletto found on that Spinelli, that murderer, who claimed—”
The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Page 22