The Man with the Wooden Spectacles

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  MAYOR SWEENEY

  “Mayor—Swee—” she ejaculated. “Oh—impossible! Saul only thought he hear—that is, it—it might have been a Sweeney—but not—not Mayor Swee—”

  But, right here, one of those curious occurrences in which Fate seems to take a hand in things mortal, took place. For the rolled-up newspaper held under the gradually loosening string of Elsa’s dress box, the box itself still propped against her thigh, popped out—fell on the floor—opened up. And Elsa’s eyes, drawn inexorably to it, by jet-black headlines, the topmost one of which contained letters full 4 inches deep, became blue-green sauce-dishes! For staring up at her—in three screaming newsheads running clear across the page—and with a story beneath that was readable, even at the distance, due to the fact that it, too, ran across the page—and in 36-point boldface type—was the dumfounding news:

  MAYOR SWEENEY GOES INSANE!!!

  WORRY SAYS WIFE—

  ORGANIC BRAIN DISEASE SAYS SPECIALIST!

  Mayor, Completely Violent, Has Delusion He is old

  Parson Gang Chief; also Calls Continuously for Some Unknown Actor, known as Rickbar

  [Exclusive with this paper!]

  Late this afternoon, the mind and brain of Chicago’s illustrious Mayor, the Honorable Gardiner Sweeney, crashed. He had to be constrained forcibly by servants from injuring himself and those about him. To his family physician, Dr. Oldfield Owens, Mrs. Sweeney confided that her husband had been worrying intensely during the last 24 hours—the cause, however, not being known to her. Specialists called in, however, declare such worry to be only the precipitating factor: long existent, organic brain disease, they claim, underlies the real crumbling of the Mayor’s mind. The nature of the causative pathology, the specialists say, precludes utterly any chance of recovery; and Mayor Sweeney was quietly removed, at 6:30 this evening, to South Shore Sanitarium pending permanent commitment. The Mayor’s delusions are colored by today’s crime news: he believes he is Chief of the old Parson Gang, and its “wire” from days when he was First Assistant State’s Attorney. He seems also to believe, so nearly as can he gathered, that he is a stage manager, assembling performers for a production, for he calls continually for one actor named Rickbar, and for some quickchange vaudeville artist named Nat. These must be, Mrs. Sweeney believes, acts he has seen and liked somewhere, though the particular Thespian actually named by the Mayor is not listed, under any spelling, in the National Actors’ Registry, A special meeting of the City Council is being called for tomorrow to appoint a succ—

  The balance of the story lay on the half of the paper undermost.

  “Oh why—why,” Elsa half moaned, “couldn’t Saul have but waited—another day? For I just know now—as sure as I ever knew anything—that he’s—he’s done it. He—he was too damned cool—in that letter. He—oh, why couldn’t all this have happened 24 hours later than it did? For God—God has taken a hand—confirmed all that Saul could say—as to our own mayor being head of that gang—why—Saul would have received plaudits for killing Rickbauer—not conviction—oh damnittohell, God, why oh, why must you always get in late with everyth—”

  Elsa broke off with a start. For she realized she was being blasphemous. And that lightning would hit the Ulysses S. Grant Building in less than 2 seconds.

  “Excuse me, God,” she said now, reverently and humbly. “It—it isn’t up to me—to pass judgment—on anybody—anything. All it’s up to me to do—is to tell Uncle Silas—that the son he hates with all his heart—and—and guts—is prob’ly dead—and disgracedly so to boot!”

  And steeling herself for what she knew would be bound to be a painful and difficult ordeal, Elsa returned once more to the locked door she had left some considerable number of minutes before. The rhythmical and regular squeak of the swivel chair inside continued to sound as she inserted her key deftly into the lock, and again she heard a newspaper page being turned.

  And, realizing how drawn and tense must be her face, she turned the key hurriedly; and, already announced as it were, by the clattering rattle of the old reluctant lock, she flung open the door.

  Only to stand transfixed on the threshold. Her eyes widening puzzledly.

  For the chair she had heard squeaking was squeaking all right, only—there was nobody in it! There was, in fact, nobody in the room at all. And swinging her eyes dazedly toward the window, she immediately found the explanation of that chair’s never-ending song. For the window was up—to its fullest extent. And the wind from it, bellowing into the room—sluicing under the crack in the door—impinging at the same time on the broad back of the swivel chair, itself revolved just enough to catch that wind, and attached to the base by only a weak and un-oiled spring—the wind had been doing it! And, as though in a weird dream of some sort, Elsa saw, at the right-hand end of the windowsill, and lying empty on its side, its tin screw-stopper some distance off, the 2-ounce alcohol miniature which once before she had viewed tonight—though then sealed and corked. And her eyes, sweeping still dazedly from the windowsill back along the floor, came to rest on her uncle’s Real Estate News lying thereon. And one of whose closely adherent pages even now was being unrelentingly pried up by that determined wind, and being turned rustlingly over as though by an invisible hand. And still utterly and hopelessly dazed, Elsa’s eyes swung sidewise to the desk where the empty creaking chair stood. Noting, this time, that her electric typewriter—old Mr. Million-Words-a-Minute himself!—who, when she had left, had been far over at the left rear corner of that desk, now stood drawn up in the front of it. And, alongside Mr. Million-Words, a paper, whose further edge, standing vertically upright because of a crisp fold in it that had not been sufficiently smoothed out, showed, in familiar black letters, the word DEED. And, on the other side of Mr. Million-Words—the phone! And Elsa, trying founderingly to add one and one together in her stupefied brain, now noted her uncle’s umbrella—its binding tape unleashed—lying carelessly across the rear of the desk where Mr. Million-Words himself had stood. And now, as in a hopelessly weird dream, her numbed brain commenced to take in Silas Moffit’s black hat, lying a foot from the umbrella. And then only, full and complete realization coming to her at last, did Elsa—dropping both dress box and letter simultaneously from her hands—sweep lightning-like across the small room. To that wide-open window. Her brain, she was absolutely certain now, was going ’round and ’round within her skull. And so she held tight—tight!—to the sides of the window. As she gazed out—and down. And, gazing down, felt her soul go sick within her. Both at the 10 stories of distance—and at what she saw at the end of that distance.

  For she could see, far far below, hundreds and hundreds of people milling about in a great surging mob. And right in front of the Ulysses S. Grant Building, moreover. And, in a tiny open circle, from which they were all magically held back somehow—a circle which, at this extreme distance, seemed but a few inches across—a circle which lay on the sidewalk below the very window—was something—a something!—resembling at this distance nothing so much as a male rag doll in black clothing—lying on its face—motionless… And now Elsa heard sirens. Police sirens—coming from the north. Out of the Loop. And saw, coming up from the south, lights—lights—lights in regular formation—the lights from a platoon of motorcycle policemen. And—faint—she turned away from the window.

  “My God!” was all she said. “And—and all the time—‘S. Moffit’—was Uncle Silas! I—I should have guessed, I ’spose; yet how—” She passed a freckled hand dazedly over her forehead. “Of course—he went to Lou Vann’s late yesterday afternoon—to warn Vann—not to take poor Saul on—as assistant State’s attorney—in that rackets division. To tell Vann—that Saul would flop. For he—he hated Saul! And of course he bought those historic wooden specs—the minute he heard of ’em—to—to frustrate poor Saul. So that Saul, when—when he should hear about them—and trace them down—and find them sold—and query Alfred Opp—would find that his
own father—had beaten him to them. Oh, what awful, awful hatreds! And—and—” And again Elsa passed her hand feebly across her forehead. “And of course Uncle Silas stuck those specs—after he’d bought ’em—as he apparently stuck most everything—crab apples—and alky miniatures—and everything else—into his umbrella. That umbrella he afterward lost! But which he was certain—after he got home last night—and collected his wits together—he’d left in the Whistling Jim—from where he must have gone straight to Lou Vann’s. And all because that umbrella-hawker outside the Whistling Jim—who must have been blind—or—or a dithering optimist—tried to sell him one! But when Keene sprung my decoy call on him tonight—and, my goodness!—that call evidently came in just as he was about to covertly type in some additional clause in that valuable deed there—good God!” And Elsa, badly shaken, to say the least, by all that had transpired, shivered violently from head to toe as she remembered how tonight she had prayed boldly to no less than Mumbo Jumbo—the god of Voodooism, that that valuable paper would eventually be eligible to her lighted match. Which now—now it was! Except that now—now—And again she shivered. And desperately her mind plodded, plodded, plodded thickly on. “But—but when Keene sprung my decoy call on him—he—why, of course—of course!—that ‘Department Z’—Uncle Silas thought Keene said ‘Department C’—and everybody knows that Department C of the Chicago Police Department, is—is the dread C.I.D.—of the Detective Bureau. Good—grief!—what he must have thought!—when he heard Keene say—‘We have Mr. Silas Moffit’s umbrella—and are seeking Mr. Moffit himself!’ For he realized then—h-h-haidfo’getter as he was—that he’d actually carried it on as far as Vann’s office—and left it there—perhaps alongside the wall back of the couch he lay down on—and not left it in that Whistling Jim store at all. And—and so he knew—at least thought he knew!—that the terrible C.I.D. had him! And that all was lost. Yet typed off this—this panegyric of hate—before he calmly stepped out—of the ‘cycle.’ Whew! Wonder who—in that Whistling Jim shop—really got the lost umbrella—with the specs in it? And wheth—and so ’twas Uncle’s gamer’—loaning money to judges and lawyers—that Richard St. George came here—to write up? And not—not Saul’s spectacle-collecting game? Which would have been scads bett—oh dear me!—poor Uncle Silas! And so it’s been he—instead of Saul—who’s been mixed up—with that horrib—but how—how could he ever have met such a notorious wom—why!—of course!—since her raided flat was at Kedzie Avenue and Pershing Road—and he owns some old rattletrap flats on the southwest side called The Kershing Flats—that’s it!—‘Kershing’—Kedzie and Pershing!—he was her landlord!—the mysterious landlord that those real-estate agents are covering up. Oh dear! I’d—I’d never have believed he had one hundredth of the supreme nerve it took—to type out on old Mr. Million-Words—a document such as thi—but Aunt Linda was right. When she said I’d never know the real man—till he was practically on his death bed—that he wore a mask—that he had insane blood in him—was a ‘give-upper’—no different than Gran’ther Moffit—who blew his brains out—for no other reason than a crazy fantastic newsstory. ‘Give-upper’—that’s it! For Uncle Silas—Uncle Silas let guilty knowledge—set to work by my poor, innocent enough little subterfuge to only decoy him out of here—execute him. Execute him—when the set-up, by which he’d have grabbed my $100,000 property by midnight tonight, was just a hundred per cent perfect! Execute him—for grand larceny—and at least second-degree murder!”

  And before an alarming numbness, that right now was commencing to manifest itself in both of her small feet, should become so complete—due to the shock of all this—that she could not get over to the phone—Elsa crept to the instrument. And dialed it. Though for “Operator” only. For she wasn’t up to wildly tossing over the pages of the telephone book; of scanning columns…names…initials…

  “Too—too ill,” she told the operator weakly, “to—to look up my party. But would you kindly get me—the State’s Attorney—and call me back when you have him? Yes, please. Oh—a message? To get you past—his secretary? We-ell—yes. Tell him the party at this number—has a signed deposition—covering completely the movements of a piece of evidence he has—that will send one McGurk to the electric chai—or no—tell the State’s Attorney, rather, that—that he has an even hour to—to save his face! To quash. Or to file a nolle-prosse. In the matter of Indictment No. 42, 6———well skip it, then. And just tell him that his case—against one swell guy—that is, I mean against one Richard St. George—alias John Doe—is dead. As dead as a doornail. Has collapsed—completely. Thank you—I’ll wait.”

  THE END