The Man with the Wooden Spectacles

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Why not?” Elsa mouthed, and nodded, realizing that three dollars would pay her room rent for a week.

  “But eef,” “Deafy” persisted, “hay stell arrest me, den aye don’t have to pay you, hey? Is agree?”

  “Okay,” said Elsa sadly. And nodded agreement. “Law business,” she muttered, “is certainly getting darned contingential around this neck of the woods!” And her face fell, as she thought of a certain “contingential quitclaim” she had once blindly signed—and which was as good as due to become an out-and-out quitclaim once that trial of John Doe got openly under way tonight; and then she thought automatically of the trial itself, rushing—rushing—rushing relentlessly down upon her—exactly like a mountain torrent; rushing—And to change her own thoughts from a deep black to at least a dark brown, she pointed at the luxurious desk.

  “Where going?” she mouthed.

  “Meester Mortimer duMont—creem’nal lawyer—moving een t’morrow,” proclaimed “Deafy.”

  “Ow!” said Elsa. “And now—criminal lawyers—moving in to the U. S. Grant Building! Hellfire—just as E. Colby, shorn of ye old ancestral estates, will be needing all the business she can get to—eat—and to pile up a burial competence—competition has to gather on the doorstep. Oh—well.” And she sighed.

  The elevator stopped now, and “Deafy” let her out at a floor which somehow he knew—but she did not!—was floor 10. “Ay be oop to see you t’morrow,” he said. And drew his doors shut again, and she heard the car lumbering back downward.

  And circling the elevator shafts, backed up on this floor with iron partitions to at least 12 feet of their height, Elsa once more found herself in terrain that was familiar to her: her own floor. And, turning off down the soft wood-floored corridor on which her own cubicle of an office faced, she made her way to that brightly lighted panel which marked it. And her waiting uncle! Realizing that the hour was close now—very close—for her calls to be coming in; yet confident, however, that her uncle would make a swift exit—once she released him—to retrieve his lucky umbrella; and she was more than curious as to exactly what excuse he would render her.

  Her swivel chair was creaking away most imperturbably, however, as she drew up to her door, giving forth the same casual song it had given when she had locked him in—“E-eeka—onka—e-eeka—onka—” and she heard the unmis­takable rustle of a page of his Weekly Real Estate News being turned completely over. And her face fell. A mile! He was taking things awfully—awfully placidly! And she wondered if Keene Larborough had really gotten through to him with the decoy call. Or was it just that, finding himself locked in, her uncle had perforce had to cultivate patience? And taking out her key to release him—so she devoutly hoped anyway!—her eyes fell on an envelope which, she saw, had been shoved more than halfway underneath her door. And, plainly, so quietly that her uncle, rocking away in the chair, had not heard the sliding of it under. Much less seen it, engrossed, no doubt, in his Weekly Real Estate News!

  “Ho-ho!” she nodded to herself. “A note from Keene—telling me about the results of his call!”

  And, curiously, she drew the envelope out.

  Not dreaming, in the least, as she did so, of the shock she was to receive when she should, very shortly, read its opening lines—and then its signature!

  CHAPTER XXIX

  “Bombshell of Hate!”

  The envelope proved to be longish in shape. In short, at least a No. 10. And, from the feel of her thumb beneath it, sealed.

  And it was typed, on its face, just:

  Att’y Barlow James,

  in care Elsa Colby.

  “Barlow—James?” she repeated wonderingly. “The Big Shot—in clearing lunatics! But—but—why—why on earth—in care of me?” Arid quite bewildered she turned the envelope over—only to find that its flap, either having borne old mucilage, or else having been but hastily pressed down after it had been moistened—had failed to adhere to the envelope proper, and merely lay dry—and separate!—from the latter.

  Elsa, it may be quite frankly said—being an attorney, at least of sorts!—was by no means one blindly to relay on an envelope, poked anonymously under her door, to any attorney or attorneys at the far, far other end of the professional and financial scale from herself—at least when the contents thereof were examinable!

  Or, perhaps it may be said more succinctly, Elsa had all the curiosity of the eternal femine!

  Or again—and in shorter and curter language—Elsa was human!

  And so—quite unashamedly, and quite unblushingly!—she withdrew the contents of the envelope, finding them to be—at least judging from the size and shape and weight thereof—either a tri-folded thick sheet—or perhaps two thin sheets—of foolscap paper. And which, believing it to be but a single sheet, she deftly and impatiently—and still quite unblushingly!—shook open, by the one of its corners closest to her thumb and which far overlapped the corner or corners beneath. Revealing, as it shook completely open, that the supposed sheet in question was not just one sheet of foolscap—but was in reality a duplex sheet, capable of having a foolscap-sized piece of carbon paper inserted between its halves—and now constituting, as it hung downward from her thumb and forefinger, a broad ribbon of paper full 26 inches long. And containing typing. Typing in single-spaced lines, moreover! And so filling the entire side of the double sheet now facing her that it was plain it must run over to the upper half of the reversed double side, which latter had been closed entirely in by folds when she had withdrawn it. And to further unblushingly read which—for Elsa still had quite no intention of being messenger boy for anybody till she knew something of the “why” and “whereof” thereof!—to further unblushingly read which—at least the side facing her—she moved back in the corridor a full 10 feet—under the first over-hanging corridor light, in fact—sticking the envelope in her bosom, and propping her suitbox, with its rolled-up late Despatch tautly beneath its top and longitudinal string, against her thigh.

  But even as the “e-eeka—onka—e-eeka—onka—” of the ever placidly rocking swivel chair faintly reached her ears—and again, distantly, the rustle of a newspaper page—she found, with a bit of a shock, that the very opening greeting in the letter was not to Attorney Barlow James at all—but was to a woman! A woman, moreover, who—as Elsa, at least, was in a position to know—was keeper—rather now, ex-keeper!—of a marijuana smoking-flat!—was quite definitely, in fact—as Elsa was shortly to learn, as she traversed the dumfounding communication—that same notorious individual who had been described to her late today by Art Kelgrave of the Narcotics Squad. That infamous creature who had once been, for one brief month in her doubtlessly exotic youth, an English titled lady, then a secret agent and “decoy” in Affairs Oriental in London—as well as gambling room keeper there, then a prostitute in Buenos Aires, then—considerably later, no doubt—keeper of a low house for Negroes in Harlem, New York—then a shoplifter in Cleveland!—then a booker of girls, in Chicago, to dance nude at stag parties—and then, last of all, and through connections with certain Midwest Mexicans, keeper of a fly-by-night marijuana smoking-flat in Chicago. A little dried-up brown woman today, according to Art Kelgrave—full 50 years of age—and looking exactly like a shriveled-up mummy with a face like a cocoanut, except that she sported weird-looking yellow peroxided hair which pulled her down 10 years anyway, in age. And all of which was to explain, in part, this letter going to an attorney. Except that it did not explain the fact that the attorney in question was a high-priced specialist in insanity, nor did it explain why it had been shoved under Elsa Colby’s door for relaying thereto. And not at all did it explain—at least in its opening—the highly affectionate tone of the communication’s beginning.

  For, dated at the top with today’s date, and year, it began:

  My own sweet and loyal Eustaqua:

  “Good Lord!” Elsa exclaimed—for at this point in the communication she was
, of course, at this point only! “Could—could it be?—that notorious Filipino woman?—whom Art Kelgrave said was known as ‘End-of-the-Road’?”

  And now twenty wild horses could not have torn Elsa Colby away from this mystifying letter.

  And she went on with its lines.

  This letter is sent to you in care of Barlow James, the best attorney in the United States on matters involving insanity. He has habeas corpused more inmates out of asylums, and kept them out, than any other attorney. He is reported on the phone as out of town tonight—while you in turn, as a result of last night’s trouble, are not reachable—and so I am leaving the letter with someone who will be neutral-minded enough in the matter it deals with, to get it on to James.

  “Th’ neutral-minded gink,” Elsa grimaced, “being of course, muh!” But at the next words in the letter Elsa’s blue-green eyes opened as wide as plates in a Greek restaurant.

  For they ran:

  For when this letter reaches your hands, Eustaqua—even James’ hands—even the hands of the party who will send it on to James—I shall be dead, by my own hand.

  “Good—grief!” Elsa ejaculated. “A—a suicide letter. But—but who—” And immediately she turned the long sheet quickly over. To see what name—if any!—was signed to the portion that overran the two connected front pages of the now sinister-sounding communication.

  And then and thereupon, she uttered but one word—even as the swivel chair inside her office continued to sing its plaintive song.

  “Saul!”

  And then, on the very heels of that one word:

  “Heavens—and earth!—Saul!—messed up with that notorious Oriental creature and—and proclaiming he’s going to commit suic—Saul!—of all persons. But what—why—”

  For at the bottom of what was nearly a full foolscap page of overrun typing was written, in black ink, the laconic appellation which only that day Saul Moffit had bitterly told her he had officially taken over the last 4 months—and forever, to boot! Even to the extent of having it legally certified and recorded.

  S. Moffit

  Scornful—even contumelius, it seemed—in the very way it was signed! As scornful, indeed, as it had looked, when printed only, on its queer, queer card—that card which he had hastily typed out earlier today in that south side Negro real-estate office—and sent her post-haste by special delivery—that card warning her, Elsa, that his father might try insanity commitment against him—that card which now lay torn to pieces, on the floor above, in the cuspidor.

  “Jupiter—Jehosephat!” Elsa said again. A bit aghast, to say the least, at her inadvertent discovery of what was, plainly, a far more sordid romance than she had suspected—a romance between Saul, 40-year-old intellectual—but looking decidedly more than 50, due to alcoholic changes—and this notorious yet drab adventuress of Asiatic blood, actually 50—but, according to Art Kelgrave, looking no more than 40 because of her smallness and her peroxided hair; yet nevertheless, as one of pure Asiatic blood, in the sere and yellow leaf—if not the serest and yellowest leaf! A romance growing out of the coming together of two persons so unlike—and with such unlike histories—that it held absolutely no explanation—until suddenly, at this very juncture, Elsa herself furnished it!

  “He met her, of course—through making a collection from her—for that bootleg brewery he told me about—for the illicit beer she sold in her flat—at a dollar a throw or so—to quench the thirst of those weed-smokers. And which shows at least that he did work for that brewery—in the beginning. Till—till she plainly took him up! As plain now, all right—how they came together—as—as the horn on a rhino’s nose!”

  And having now solved this aspect of the case, Elsa felt a tremendous surge of relief sweep over her. For the threat of suicide broached in the letter did not, somehow, worry her. For the things that Saul—when drunk—was going to do!—but never did, simply because drunkenness always caught up with him, were legion and multifarious—to say the least! And Elsa—from years back—had knowledge aplenty about that! “Saul—Saul was drunk,” she continued, nodding, “and how!—when he wrote this—and he’s spilled some beans, too, and how!—but I—I’d better get the police out, just the same, to keep an eye on whatever place he—he indicates he’s going to try to—well of all things!—and his own father right in there now, and—but—but what’s buzzing in Saul’s alky-soaked brain that he should—”

  And she turned back, bewilderedly, to the opening of the letter.

  And continued exactly where she had left off—her blue eyes widening even more as she read:

  I am the one, Eustaqua, who killed the man known as Adolph Reibach, and stole the skull of that Chinese Wah Lee; and—

  “Good—good grief!” Elsa found herself saying. “He’s not just merely drunk; he’s—he’s gone plumb cra—but no, he’s mixed his drinks this time, that’s all, and—”

  And she read hastily on, wondering just exactly how soon, after Saul had left her today, he had started in to drink—wondering, even more, in fact, whether he had somehow gotten laudanum, or paregoric, or opium, or something, into one of his drinks. Or whether he had even mixed, with his drinking, the fumes of a couple of marijuana cigarettes, probably obtained from Eustaqua Brurbriuante in her exotic quarters across that rear passageway from her sordid flat.

  —and, as I stated, when the envelope containing this letter is torn open, I shall already be dead.

  “—dead drunk!” Elsa commented sagely. “But just the same, old Saul, old Saul, old Saul, ol’ boy, I’m gonna—”

  She screwed up her forehead at the next statement which, following the word “dead,” obviously referred to it. And which ran:

  A simple state which again and again I’ve told you, Eustaqua, is as ridiculously easy to enter as it is to go to sleep. And—

  “Says you, Saul,” Elsa commented out loud, “who never sampled that drink yet!” And perturbedly went on:

  And after entering which, a man is instantaneously back in existence—in another cycle thereof—but enjoying all the delights and sensations of life.

  “Which may be your theory, Saul,” commented Elsa grimly. “And in spite of which I’ll hold right on to the existence I’ve got. The while, ol’ Saul, ol’ Saul, ol’ Saul, ol’ boy, I’m gonna have your father put every policeman in Chicago to—”

  Saul’s father!

  Who hated him so! And was, Elsa had to admit, equally hated in return by Saul. Saul’s father! Who even now sat rocking away, less than 15 feet away from where she stood reading a drunken suicide letter, addressed to the notorious Eustaqua Brisbriuante, from Saul himself. Ironic—to say the least, Elsa realized. Would Silas Moffit, when shown this wild hectic effusion, say, “Let the dirty Flip-lover bump himself off!” Or would he say “My God, Elsa—let’s do something.” She wondered!

  And drove on with the disconcerting communication. Noting, a bit troubledly, that, for a drunken man, it displayed an uncanny knowledge of law. though that wasn’t any unusual thing—considering how Saul had once both studied law and practiced it. And that, moreover, drunken chess players could play extremely accurate chess. It merely indicated that—But frowning, she drove on.

  I shall wish you, Eustaqua, to have James represent your interests. Concerning something of mine. And which now must become yours. For I—

  “His spectacle collection!” Elsa ejaculated aghast. And then added grimly: “And a damned good thing it is that I got this fool letter first!—for if I know anything at all about law, he’s turning it into a deed that can not only invalidate his previous willing of that collection to that museum, but—but will sweep all those historic specs into the hands of a common dive-keeper. Unless, of course, he’s referring to some other possess—but, good Lord, he’s got nothing else in the world. We-ell!” And she stiffened resolutely up. And the 327 pairs of spectacles in Saul Moffit’s collection could not have had, at this m
oment, a better guardian—a stouter Cerberus! “If this idiot,” she said decidedly, “coked up on alky—is herewith virtually deeding that swell collection of specs to a—a doggoned whore, I’ve got the deed! And—how! And will continue to keep—”

  But Elsa was to learn, a paragraph or so later, that the letter in her hands referred not at all to Saul’s precious collection of spectacles—definitely willed, as he had assured her that day, to a museum—but to quite another item, though one which was, in its way, perhaps even more unusual than the spectacles collection. And she was to learn, moreover, that it was this item which—in connection with hate—sheer, supreme hate!—and a certain weird and blithe concept of Saul Moffit’s concerning the multiplicity and inexhaustibility of the cycles of existence!—was the cause of the letter now in her hands being so meticulously, so coolly, detailed, instead of being—as its author was to say later on in it—a brief and curt statement to the police as to his involvement with a certain affair in the Klondike Building, plus the present location of all the confirmatory details thereto. And so still believing implicitly that the letter was referring to the spectacles collection, Elsa drove fascinatedly on:

  For I do not intend that a certain blood relative, whom I shall refer to here as THE KING OF SKUNKS—

  “Oh dear!” said Elsa. “Now it comes—of course! His father!” And she pressed on.

  —shall profit one red copper cent by the fact that I must go by my own hand, Certainly not against you, who have been a mighty loyal woman to me. The only woman in the world who has been really unselfish. A woman who knows all the world has to teach—about the Divine Art of Love. And since, Eustaqua, you are now just 40 years of age, you need to look out for yourself.

  “Just—40 years—of age!” ejaculated Elsa. “Is—good! Just skyrocketing past 50, Saul means—though, poor imbecile, he doesn’t know that! And—but of all the horrible romances! Now come smack to light! And Saul!—trying to cover it up by saying he was keeping books for a wildcat brewery! Oh, I—I knew today—when I saw him dressed like a plush horse, that some woman must be kee—and so—so she—she was keeping him? And not at all being kept—by some man—as I’m sure Art Kelgrave believed. Oh, dear me—horrible romance is right! And to think it has to—to pop up in a drunken—though thank God for that, anyway!—drunken intent-to-commit-suicide letter.” And Elsa went courageously on.