The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Bresloff,” Parkley went on, “had no time whatever to remove his contrivance from Eaves’s car; but he was of a quick mechanical turn of mind. The brake stem on this Durck-Palmer was very ornamental, containing a number of holes, running through it. Perhaps to make it lighter. So what did he do after Johnston went back into the office but pick up a rusty spike from the shop, slip it through one of the holes where, lying at right angles across the slot, it made it impossible for the brake pedal to be depressed sufficiently for knife blade to come in contact with bulb. In this manner, by driving carefully, and using the handbrake in an emergency, he could drive the girl down to the docks and bring the car back without even having to watch the brakes, or to remove the death-dealing apparatus. So, nicely fixed by a rusty nail, he washed up in a hurry, climbed into the dark livery, and, looking half-way decent, drove out of the garage and out to 380, Wisconsin Street, where a blonde girl with a handbag came down the steps and entered the machine. That girl, chief, for some reason which probably only you know, I guess, was Roslyn Van Etten instead of Avery Reardon. Once in the coupé, next to him, Bresloff explained the situation regarding the taxicab strike, and told her that this was Eaves’s own machine, and that he was an employee of the garage. He claims that he was entirely courteous and minded his own business entirely.

  “Bresloff decided to drive to the docks by way of Lincoln Park, so he headed the machine around to the park and entered it, two blocks north of the Centre Street entrance. It was appreciably dark now. He drove along through the park so as to come out at the south end — but at a point where the trees and bushes are heaviest the car stopped dead with a terrific grinding noise as though something was entangled in the mechanism. It was raining now, a light drizzle. The car was near the side of the road, not far from some bushes. Bresloff cut off the power, hopped out, closing the glass door to keep the drizzle off his passenger, and climbed underneath the machine. With his electric flashlight he found the trouble in short order. The car had picked up a piece of long rusty wire lying in the roadway, and had whipped it around the axle. He had to work for ten minutes, cutting the wire bit by bit away with his pliers.

  In the meantime, however, while he banged and snipped away with his tool, what had become of the girl with the handbag who sat in the glass-enclosed car above him, its interior now lighted with its own bright electric bulb? The explanation that Bresloff himself gives is as credible as any that can be constructed. She must have got impatient, fidgety, a bit restless. She couldn’t get out and walk around, as it was too wet outside. At any rate, she shifted her place to the driver’s seat, which was directly at her left side. She must have been familiar with different makes of cars, and having nothing else to while away her time must have fallen to studying the different levers and appliances on the Durck-Palmer. In some way — simply because there was nothing to distract her attention — that same attention must have fallen to the brake-pedal or better, to a rusty iron spike thrust crudely through one of the holes in the brake stem. She must have puzzled over this a minute and then, thinking it was something that had accidentally gotten entangled there, she leaned down and drew it out. But this brought to her attention a curious round rubber bulb fixed near the end of the slot. Probably the first thought that struck her mind was that this was some sort of a cheap patent cushion for the brake pedal, and she must have placed her foot on the brake-pedal and depressed it until contact was produced, depressed it vigorously, to test out her theory. Well — it’s easy to surmise what happened then. The knife-blade, which you’ll remember had been made into a razor edge, sliced right through this softer bulb and, even as it was withdrawn — well — the bulb must have almost ripped itself open with the escaping gas. And the girl, dazed, not understanding what had happened, sat back in her seat in a glass-enclosed chamber, filling like lightning with gaseous death. Not even the one or two automobilists which Bresloff claims he heard purring past could have known what was happening.

  “At least we know this: Bresloff finally emerged from beneath the car, his face perspiring. As he went to open the door of the lighted coupé, he stopped short. A strange sight — one that told its own story — met his eyes. The girl was sitting in the driver’s seat, the nail lying on her lap, her eyes wide open, a glassy stare in them, her body absolutely motionless. Bresloff watched for a few seconds and he knew full well that she was dead — that that machine was full of dia-cyanosine. It must have flashed across his mind, too, during that same moment, that it was lucky for him that the doors of that coupé fitted machine-like into carefully milled casings: that the wind was blowing away from the car. What might have happened to him underneath, if some of that heavier-than-air gas had rolled out and down beneath the machine? However, he went into immediate action. At once he sprang to the rear of the car. He quickly loosened the straps on the extra tyre. He took his pocket-knife and severed it from the tube that connected with it. Then he tossed it far from him into the bushes. With his lips and nostrils closed tight, he flung open the doors of the coupé, snapped out the light and lowered the glass front. Then, nearly bursting for want of a breath, he skipped off thirty or forty feet and sat down on the damp grass beneath some bushes, safely to the windward, where he could breathe without danger. He knew full well that his device, so well protected by him, had been fatal to his passenger. And he knew that he was going to have to do something to hide completely what had happened.

  “After ten minutes,” continued Parkley, “Bresloff knew he could approach the machine — that it must be completely aired out by now, particularly since he had removed the source of the poison gas. He did so. He reached in and felt the girl’s wrist. She was dead. She had gotten a dose of the gas under such perfect conditions that she hadn’t even had a chance.

  “Lowering the rest of the glass sides for safety, and waiting a bit longer, he climbed in beside her. Looking up the road to see that no car was in sight, he raised her body up and placed it back in the original seat she had occupied. He knew now that he must get rid of the body and do it in such a way that no suspicion could attach itself to him. But as to this, an idea had already entered his quick thinking brain while he sat under the bushes. With the car entirely open now, and the dead girl sitting on the seat next to him with her wide-open, glassy eyes, he drove rapidly out of the park, along Lake Shore Drive and off on to old dilapidated Rush Street with its ancient empty mansions and vacant lots. At Austin Avenue he threaded his way through a tangle of tall warehouses and clear up to the edge of one of the lonely river slips.

  “Before putting his plan into execution, however, he was careful enough to look into the girl’s handbag. In it he found a number of miscellaneous articles, including a long ticket constituting a circular tour around Canada by way of Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto, and Buffalo. A brief inspection of the ticket sections, which were separated from each other only by perforations, and a further modification of his plan suggested itself. He tore off section one and two, each of which were signed ‘Avery Reardon,’ as were all the other sections. Section number one was an auditor’s coupon, no doubt to be taken up before boarding the boat. Section number two was the boat passage from Chicago to Sault Ste. Marie. Both sections he put away into his pocket. He replaced sections three, four and five in her handbag and once more entwined the chain in her stiffening fingers. Then, with no compunctions whatever, he lifted out the body and dropped it over the slimy piling into the river. A bad error had been made by Fate, but Bresloff, as you’ll see in a second, chief, was Fate’s equal in removing all traces of the error.

  “He backed the car out, and drove back hastily to the lighted streets once more. He knew that he must make it certain to the authorities that the girl had met her death after she had boarded the City of Duluth. This he prepared to do, providing the remaining ten minutes before the boat pulled out did not slip by before he could complete his plan. He made the Goodrich docks at four minutes of six, parking the machine at the kerb some distance away. He threaded his way in among
the leave-takers and past the freight-handlers, and thrust the coupon numbered one in the hands of the man at the turnstile, seated at the base of the gang-plank. At this late minute, no pretence was made at inspecting tickets or coupons. If any inspection had been made, it’s questionable whether the odd name Avery wouldn’t have been considered masculine as well as feminine.

  “So up the gang-plank Bresloff hurried and into the hands of the purser at the top handed section two of the ticket, receiving what appeared to be a berth check and a dining-table number in return. Across the lower deck he proceeded, down into the hold and out over the freight gangplank at the other end of the boat just as the first bell was ringing. And as the big lake boat pulled away from the docks, he was seated in his machine ready to drive back to the garage, to remove all traces from the car of the fatal device he had installed, and to prepare to catch Eaves on the next rainy night that should roll around.”

  “And that night,” supplemented McIlroy, leaning back in his chair, “his original plan gone wrong, he managed nevertheless to kill Eaves with a clasp-knife in his own office?”

  “No,” replied Parkley, stacking up the sheets of typewritten paper and placing them under a paper-weight at the side of the table. “Bresloff not only denies that he killed Eaves at all, but claims that he has an unshakeable alibi. He states that he was playing cards with two Russian neighbours of his on Goose Island from eight o’clock till two in the morning on the night that Eaves died!”

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE TRAIL OF THE MINT

  AT the concluding statement of the police department stenographer, a profound silence filled the room. It was broken by McIlroy.

  “Claims, eh, he has an alibi for that night?”

  Young Parkley nodded.

  “Does he give the names of the parties he was with?”

  Kelsey interrupted at this point. “Yes, chief. A Russian by the name of Danakow, and the latter’s nephew. Danakow sports a five-cent telephone. We called him over after the confession was finished. Says the statement is correct. They played cards from eight o’clock Monday night till two o’clock Tuesday morning.”

  McIlroy was wrapped in silence for another minute. Then he spoke in Brazleton’s direction. “What do you make of it, doctor? If our man is a paranoiac, as you say, can we rely on a statement like that?”

  Brazleton nodded. “Indeed, yes. Bresloff wouldn’t take the trouble to deny a solitary murder when he admits three of ‘em and a case of manslaughter in addition. He can only be electrocuted once, remember, or be sent to the asylum for the criminally insane for one lifetime. In fact, inspector, he is at a stage right now, in his particular type of mental disorder, where the patient invariably glories in his own achievements, and if he had killed Eaves he would be only too quick to add it on to his list.”

  “And you, Dr. Goldbeck?”

  “The crimes are those of revenge, not of mental disorder,” Goldbeck reiterated firmly. “But I’ll agree with my distinguished colleague across the room in this degree: If Bresloff went so far as to admit three murders and a case of manslaughter, he wouldn’t conceal the fourth. In fact, he is so rational that he knows if he admitted the fourth murder the two Russians with whom he played cards that night would ultimately come forward and destroy his statement. No, inspector, if he says he didn’t kill Eaves, then I think you can safely wager that he didn’t.”

  “Then,” said McIlroy looking somewhat downcast, “the detective bureau, after having its little siege last night and destroying about fourteen hundred dollars’ worth of property for which the city will have to pay, still has the Eaves case on its hands. H-m.” He drummed thoughtfully on the arms of his chair with his fingers.

  As for Folwell, he had been one of the most rapt listeners to all this technical and scientific testimony. One impression, toward the close of the unfolding of Bresloff’s confession had implanted itself firmly in his being, dominating all lesser emotions that that recital might have raised. And that was the strange working out of poetic justice which had been demonstrated in the death of Roslyn Van Etten. Feodor Bresloff, with his mantrap, had, through the strange working of chance that seemed more a tightly-forged chain of cause and effect, unknowingly cheated of his matrimonial prize the very youth who had once married and lived with his daughter, and who, as Folwell had little doubt whatever, had mistreated her with his pettiness and wilfulness till the poor mind had crumpled up. Bresloff the father, had tried to revenge himself by throwing in front of Lionel Pettibone an obstacle of ten thousand dollars before allowing him to consummate his second marriage; unknowingly he had defeated that marriage for all time to come. Truly, the young wife who still lived in the Buffalo hospital for the insane had been avenged, for Folwell knew Lionel enough to realize that the loss of Roslyn Van Etten’s fortune and position was a blow from which that young man would never, as long as he lived, completely recover.

  But from this dominating impression of the recital, his mind quickly leaped to the unexpected feature that had suddenly entered the case. Bresloff — the Star of the Night — had not killed Eaves after all! Folwell’s brain, now that it was long removed from the excitement and fatigue of the night before, was working rapidly, actively. Suddenly shorn was his reason of the gripping conviction that thus far had held every one — namely, that if three of the “kings” had been killed by an agency which had also threatened the fourth and extra “king “that man must neccessarily have been killed by the same agency. And equally suddenly was his reason illuminated by a faint glimmer of light that was just dawning somewhere in his brain. The light grew brighter and brighter and suddenly showed itself rising above the horizon of subconscious ratiocination. It was nothing other than a memory of that memorable morning when he had unlocked the door of Eaves’s offices and had found that individual dead in his swivel chair. It was the recollection of the smell of peppermint trapped in the transmitter of the ‘phone in the outer office. And of a sudden Folwell saw it all — saw other things as he might have seen them in the first place — saw that in them and in that faint aroma of peppermint lay the clue which was perhaps to completely illuminate the case and uncover the murderer of J. Hamilton Eaves. He could not contain himself, so carried away was he by his all-absorbing idea. He spoke, eagerly, yet a bit hesitantly.

  “Inspector McIlroy, I am only a layman in this case, and not a member of the force here at headquarters. And all along it has seemed to me, as it has to all of you, that if the unknown Star of the Night — now Bresloff — had killed Paddon, Rothblume and Lee, he must necessarily be the killer of the fourth man whom he had threatened. Now, if we accept as the approximate minute of Eaves’s death the hour shown on the Dictatograph notes which his death interrupted, and also find that Bresloff can account for his actions several hours both before and after, there looms up in my mind a rather peculiar set of facts which hitherto have been literally forced to the background by the apparent obviousness of the case. May I give them as I see them, and as I, only, happen to know them?”

  As Folwell spoke he found himself the cynosure of every eye in the room, and the experience, like that previous one he had undergone, caused him to shift uneasily in his seat. But even as he did so, his mind working rapidly along certain channels whose openings had thus far been hidden, came more and more to the conclusion he had suddenly formed.

  “You may certainly have the floor if you have anything of interest to relate,” McIlroy was saying, looking dubiously at him.

  Folwell moved his chair around so as to face the remaining members of the assemblage as well as McIlroy. He crossed one leg over the other. At last he spoke:

  “J. Hamilton Eaves,” Folwell began, “was a very spotless man in his personal attire — a fop almost, and one of the sources of annoyance in his life was the fact that the transmitters of the telephones were filled with dust each night when the sweepers came in to clean up the offices. In fact he was unfortunate enough to come away one morning from the use of his own ‘phone with a ridiculo
us-looking rim of dust around his very clean-shaven pink mouth. Thus it was that, being a sort of inventor as well as invention promoter, he conceived the idea that if the typewriters had dust covers, the telephones ought also to have them. The result was that he had made for each and every ‘phone in the place a long silk bag which he ordered old man Fisher to drop over the instruments at night when the office closed.”

  A tense silence filled the room. Every man there was listening to Folwell’s every word. He uncrossed his legs, recrossed them, and managed somehow to continue under the battery of eyes that were focussed on him.

  “Now, when I left Eaves’s office at about seven o’clock on the night of the day in which we made arrangements for me to substitute for him, he asked me if I had any peppermint lozenges about me such as he’d seen me have in my desk from time to time. I told him that he’d find some in my desk and gave him permission to help himself. Next morning when I came upon him dead, that paper bag was on his desk, with its contents nearly all consumed. Also when I removed the silken bag and raised the receiver of the ‘phone in the outer office to call you people here, there was a pronounced smell of peppermint in the transmitter; yet a later similar inspection of the ‘phone on his desk while you were on your way over showed no smell of peppermint whatever. Now what does that indicate? And does it indicate to you people what it does to me?”