The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  True, he reflected uneasily, the convincing of Shanks would mean the release of sufficient shares to inveigle the Schwierlitzer woman into buying a half interest in the thing. But he had no doubts that there were other much smaller prospects unearthed by Eaves before his death, as well as by Meier and Beebe. If the Schwierlitzer woman were lost as a customer, Lionel would hardly close up the business before disposing of the 7,000 shares, a share to a customer, if needs be. And Folwell’s being revolted, now that the iniquity of the “game” had been so openly proclaimed by Eaves’s stepson, at the thought that these shares must find their way into the hands of poor working men and wash-women, girls, and women, like Mrs. Sarah Hepburn, with a slender patrimony and not sufficient acumen to see the difference between an investment and a wild speculation. It all aligned itself into the following clear-cut proposition: Either Amelia Schwierlitzer must be the victim, or else a score of poor devils who had little or nothing.

  “How well-off is this woman?” he said suddenly, his eyes piercing Lionel.

  “She’s worth a half a million,” returned Lionel promptly. “She’s rolling in it.”

  Folwell made no reply. Inwardly he reflected. “Shall the victim be,” he said to himself, “the woman worth a half million, all gained on a beverage composed of alcohol, hops and water, or a hundred or more shortsighted, luckless, tired-looking men and women of the type that go home from work every night hanging wearily to the straps on the street cars?” He shook his head. “Better by far Amelia Schwierlitzer; better by far.” And once more Folwell’s thoughts reverted to the “confession.” Merely to tell the truth — to state actual facts — to the misguided Shanks, who clung hopefully to the shares he had received for the Dictatograph rights, was all that was required to get that paper back. Then, with that paper torn into a thousand bits, he, Folwell, was free to go where he would — to Frisco, Australia, South Africa; anywhere to work in a new environment that would help him partly to forget the romance of those happy days with the girl of the big brown eyes, in the offices of the National Industrial Securities Company.

  He turned to Lionel: “How soon would you turn over this paper? And suppose Shanks refuses to be convinced?”

  “As soon as you deliver the best technical talk on the Dictatograph that’s in you to Shanks. If he fails to come across I’ll pay you just the same, for I’ll warrant that he’ll come back inside of an hour if the first talk doesn’t quite filter in, and be glad to get out from under at a cancellation of his note for $2,000 and an additional $3,000 in cash.”

  “What time do you expect him at your home?” Folwell asked briefly.

  “At eleven o’clock,” said the other.

  “I’ll be there,” Folwell replied.

  “The machine is waiting downstairs,” said Lionel, evidently quite prepared to avoid any chance of a slipup in his plans. “Go ahead and finish dressing, and I’ll sit here and smoke another fag.”

  Folwell sighed. The strain was beginning to tell on him. He felt that if he were to go through this ordeal of business he must be alone for a few minutes — alone with his grief of last night. It was with difficulty that he held his face calm and unmoved. He turned to Lionel. “Suppose you go downstairs and wait for me in the machine. I’ll dress and be with you in ten minutes.”

  Eaves’s stepson arose and tossing his cigarette toward a flowerpot containing a bright, beautiful rose, in the soft petals of which it smouldered, nodded his head. He stared amusedly at the cigarette butt encased in the rose-pink petals. “Some shot that, eh — what?” He turned on his heel without making the least effort to remove the nicotine-stained, burning ember from the flower’s heart. “All right, old man, I’ll be downstairs having my puff in the bright sunshine instead. Don’t keep me waiting too long.”

  Slowly Folwell dressed. He changed his shirt and collar. For weeks he had worn the same neckties, the blue polka-dotted one on weekdays, the brown-and-crimson one on Sundays. Yet to-day, as he surveyed himself in the glass after the purely mechanical process of dressing, he noticed with a shock of surprise that around his neck — placed there through the direction of his subconscious mind — was the black silk tie that he had not worn since his mother’s death. Turning from the bureau, he felt suddenly weak, on the point of collapse. And realizing that the stress of assimilating all these sordid business details, of maintaining a calm demeanour in front of another person, was rapidly getting too much for him, he opened the bottom drawer of his bureau, and took from it an unopened bottle of brandy which he had had among his effects for over a year. He wanted to flee; he felt an overpowering desire to go by himself out on a bench on the lake front, there just to sit and stare at the lapping waves; but instead he must, for the sake of his name, if not for the name of the little crippled brother who was in his care, engage in what to him was now the most unpleasant business in the world, and thus secure the damning confession. He drew the cork from the bottle and in a little glass poured himself out a stiff drink, which he swallowed at three gulps. The fiery liquor, coursing down his throat, seemed to bolster him up almost instantly, and corking the bottle he took his hat and went down to the waiting Durck-Palmer where sat Lionel, impatiently glancing at his watch.

  All attempts at conversation he rebuffed on the way over to the Clarkson Court house. Arriving there, he waited on the steps while Lionel put the machine away in the garage and came around to the front door. Then the younger man, with a jangling bunch of keys, let them both into the gloomy house, and together they made their way to the library. Here Folwell sat by himself, thinking, thinking, answering the younger man in curt monosyllables, till when, twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang sharply, and a moment afterwards he heard Lionel’s voice talking with someone in the hall.

  Together the two voices moved to the library, and a few seconds later Lionel was stepping aside in the doorway to allow a newcomer to pass in. This latter individual was a man of about forty-five or thereabouts, short and stocky in stature, built like a bullet, and dressed in a cheap suit of sickly green that seemed to match the equally sickly yellowish-green pallor of his face. His hands were coarse, stubby, his fingernails soiled, and in his obstinate, unyielding eyes was a look of avariciousness, not at all dissimilar to that which lurked always back of Lionel’s narrow, set ones. His face was smooth, his sparse, black hair parted in the middle, with the few wisps hanging low to the slightly protruding ears on each side. His face hung in flabby rolls of fat under his eyes, his cheek jowls and the flesh under his chin giving him an appearance not unlike a bloodhound. His upper lip bore a peculiar long, white scar, far too long and jagged for a hare-lip, evidently the result of some old row or altercation, for it had been imperfectly sewed, so that the lip, as was made manifest through his later conversation, refused to meet its lower brother. As a result of this, his enunciation was most peculiar, most disturbing, entirely devoid as it was of the labials.

  “Go right on in, Mr. Shanks,” Lionel was directing. “Have a chair.” He closed the door. “Mr. Shanks, meet Mr. Folwell, father’s mechanical expert.” He opened a tiny, hand-carved closet above the desk and produced a flask and three glasses, but catching Folwell’s barely detectable negative movement of the head, he hastily put one of them back. “Suppose we have a snifter first.”

  “I’ll say I’ll will,” said Shanks eagerly. He reached forward and poured himself out a glass that brimmed clear to the top. He downed it with one gulp almost, licking off his lower and upper lips with a coarse, circular motion of his tongue. Lionel poured himself more of a gentleman’s drink, but downed it practically as quickly. Now that the alcoholic preliminaries were over, the visitor settled down luxuriously into the leather chair which he had appropriated.

  Lionel Pettibone was the first to speak: “Shanks,” he began, discarding the “Mr.", “I called you out here to Clarkson Court to speak to you about that Dictatograph whose patent rights you originally owned.”

  “Yes, what a’out the thing?” said Shanks, talking very muc
h like a man with a hare-lip, on account of that deformed upper lip that refused to meet the lower.

  “Shanks,” pronounced the younger man, “you’ve got 5,000 shares in that Dictatograph and I’m going to tell you something now that won’t please you. Instead of telling you myself, however, I’ve brought Mr. Jason Folwell, a graduate of the mechanical engineering department of the Royal College of Science and Technology, London, England, to give you the truth about that stock — about that invention of your brother’s. Mr. Folwell, as you may or may not know, is a specialist in mechanical devices. He’s an inventor himself. And if you have any doubts regarding any statement he may make, you can go to any consulting mechanical engineer and corroborate it.”

  “Unload,” grunted Mr. Shanks imperturbably. “What’s on your ‘inds, gents?” He turned and surveyed Folwell coolly from head to foot, taking a coarse black, cheap stogie from his pocket and lighting it by striking a match on the under side of the polished library chair.

  “All I am here for, Mr. Shanks,” responded Folwell, bracing himself with a powerful effort for this last final ordeal, “is to give you a technical opinion and the truth about the Dictatograph. As Mr. Pettibone says, I spent five years studying devices of this nature, their working, their feasibility. I have been for some appreciable time with Mr. Eaves, who was murdered night before last.” He paused. “The Shanks Dictatograph, Mr. Shanks, is absolutely worthless as an industrial device. Supposed to supplant stenographers, it will never do so, for the reason that dictation cannot be taken down upon it except by a special stenographer who knows her employer’s every word and phrase, and who, in fact, merely takes down a letter which is only another form letter translated and inverted a bit. It will — ”

  “Say!” Shanks’s voice was derisively sceptical. “Say, what kind of hot air are you gents trying to hand ‘e, anyway? The Dictatograph cert’nly will take down dictation. I’ll guarantee to write out a hundred words in two hundred seconds on it.”

  “Of course you will,” replied Folwell, “for the reason that the brain is generally travelling about one line ahead of the body, even in reading out loud. But try and take down another person’s dictation, Mr. Shanks, and see where you’ll land.”

  “Shucks!” snorted Shanks. “It takes a ‘right girl a few weeks’ ‘ractice. Then she can catch any’ody’s words as fast as they arrive.”

  Folwell shook his head. “That is the desideratum, but it’s something never acquired. The least speed of the employer, on new dictation, throws the girl out entirely. And I have in my mind a girl who was as bright as a steel trap, who had every reason to be able to operate it if it could be operated. The only possible speed of operation is one which no employer in the country could tolerate for ten days.”

  “ ‘Ut, hell,” interjected Shanks, “I — I ‘yself can write on it. Why can’t — ”

  “Yes, but I’ve just explained the reason why.”

  “ ‘Ut unskilled girls c’n transcri’ the notes,” remarked Shanks.

  “To be sure,” agreed Folwell,” but the machine will require such a high-priced operator that her salary, plus the salary of an unskilled girl to transcribe, will be as much as two capable stenographers. On top of this, the loss of speed will cause an actual loss in correspondence production to the company using such a device.” He paused. “Another thing. The rapid use of the shift lever, it utilizing a rather ancient principle of kinematics, invariably brings it into conflict with the so-called euphonic lever. In fact, I have found that there are certain word combinations — rare ones, to be sure — which, if used on the Dictatograph, will cause the whole machine to be jammed in an instant, purely on account of your brother’s ignorance of elementary mechanical principles.”

  Shanks stroked his chin dubiously.

  “When this happens,” Folwell went on, “it isn’t as though the operator could hastily undo the jamming with her left hand. The whole front of the machine has to be taken off by the four screws in order to release the tie-up of keys and levers.”

  “And that can’t ‘e fixed ‘y an alteration?” demanded Shanks with a sneer, a sneer as though this mechanical expert were some child.

  “Unfortunately, no,” declared Folwell. “Your brother built it according to a certain plan. I used to think that perhaps something could be done with the machine as it is, but I have since assured myself that it would take a complete reconstruction of its internal mechanism to avoid this one factor alone. And another thing, if you will.”

  “Shoot, ‘y good friend,” said Shanks. “Let’s hear the whole of your little story.”

  Folwell flushed to the roots of his hair, but he made no retort. “The operation of the machine is frightfully heavy. It’s far worse than the oldest of the old-time typewriters. As an actual fact — gained through experiment — the use of it so tires the hands and fingers that no one could ever operate it all day. Your brother was ingenious; he was artistic. He contrived an original idea in machines, and a beautiful machine as well. From the point of view of its appearance, particularly with its fittings and its red, green, and yellow keys, it’s handsomer than any adding machine or office device I’ve ever seen. But as a practical utility, it’s — well, it’s like, Mr. Shanks, a pipe organ in a one-room flat and kitchenette. Even his little device for stamping the time on each sheet of notes is unique, but to wind it one has to insert his finger and thumb in between two oily levers, bringing out his digits covered with dirt and grease. And this once a day, mind you!”

  Folwell stopped. He thought for a moment, and then went desperately on. “A final word, but a most important one, about a further serious defect — the travelling platen. The clockwork mechanism which causes it to swing continuously to and fro, automatically throwing the next line into place at the end of each swing, regardless of whether or not the girl operator is depressing her keys, requires a rewinding by her at practically every four average business letters, estimating that the platen will have to swing to and fro about thirty times in the course of transcribing one business letter. When first wound up, it travels with too much force, tending to blur some of the imprints made by the keys on it. Later, when the spring is nearly run out, if a key is pressed down with too much force, the whole machine stops. But aside from that, a girl has to wind that ponderous clockwork mechanism a score of times a day, using delicate fingers to turn a key which is not sufficiently geared against its powerful spring for slender, feminine fingers.”

  “Ah-a-ah,” sneered Shanks. “We’ll ‘ut in an electric ‘otor to wind it.”

  “You can’t put in an electric motor in the machine without building it all over anew. That would be a herculean task. And if you did, the phonetic principles involved would still be a hopeless defect.”

  Folwell stopped again, and then passed a hand over his forehead.

  “That’s about all I have to say. Mr. Pettibone has something to add, but I’m speaking only as a mechanician who knows that Dictatograph as well and better than Mr. Eaves knew it. I’m speaking only of the mechanical phase of it. I’d like to convey to you the truth that the Dictatograph is N.G. — your pungent American phrase meaning ‘No Good ‘; that it is a stock-selling proposition — that, and nothing more. That’s all.”

  Shanks smiled a sour, oily smile. “I sort of think you two chickens are tryin’ to hatch a little egg for Nathan Shanks,” he surmised adroitly. He turned to Lionel. “Well, young one, let’s hear your story.”

  Lionel grew red and then white with suppressed anger. It was plain that he didn’t relish the term “young one,” used by this sallow-faced individual with the defective upper lip.

  “You’ve heard the principal part of the story,” he retorted sharply. “So convinced am I that father has been foisting a dirty steal on the public that I am going to buy in every share of that stock and destroy it myself.” Folwell stiffened up in his chair at this barefaced lie, and his face, had either of the other two been looking in his direction, would have betrayed his amazement. “But
there’s your shares yet to consider,” went on Lionel. “You sold that thing in good faith, expecting to realize in time — say — five thousand dollars?”

  “Five thousand — hell!” ejaculated Shanks wrathfully. “I figured I’d make a fortune out of it.”

  “Well, you had a lemon, as we’ve just shown you,” said Lionel. He paused, his brow wrinkled up. Then he went on. “Now, father had a loan of $2,000 on those 5,000 shares of yours. I intend to pull them out of the market and pull them out for good. If I turn back that invention to you, you’ll proceed to market it somewhere else, and under another broker’s hands it’ll rope in more poor suckers. So I’m going to kill it and kill it dead. I’m going to let it stand as a monument to your brother’s mechanical ingenuity — the Gr-reat Sha-nks Dictatograph!” Lionel would have made a good actor. The sarcasm in his voice was more artistic than his paintings by far. “But I’m going to be decent about it so far as you’re concerned. I’m going to give you the chance either to quitclaim those shares and receive an additional thousand dollars cash, or else I’m going to foreclose on you.”

  Shanks laughed a long, derisive, harsh laugh. “Young one, you’re good. So you and your ‘echanical ex’ert here think you’re going to hang so’thing on Nathan Shanks, eh? Well, you’re doin’ nothin’ o’ the sort, ‘y lads. As for the loan on that stock, your daddy agreed to extend it for one year, and he even states he did, according to that letter the detectives are holding. Stenographer’s notes are good in court, and I’ll say that that letter stands hunky dory as evidence. So you can sit ‘ack and stew, ‘y lad, for another year, and the two o’ you can ‘oth go to blazes.” He glared belligerently at Folwell.