The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Keep your shirt on,” I told him. And drew over the phone toward me. For I was still suspicious of him, particularly his not knowing the telephone of his own rooming house. Not that that wasn’t a likely possibility, however under certain conditions.

  Hand on phone, I regarded him curiously.

  “And now,” I said, “suppose they tell me no Pete Givney lives there? Then so—what?”

  “They won’t,” he said, quite confidently.

  “Or,” I continued, “what if Peter himself comes to the phone? Then so—what?”

  “Listen,” he retorted grumpily. “How in hell can I come to that phone—when I’m here? If anybody calling theirself Peter Givney comes to that phone, I give you permission to sink one o’ your slugs through my guts, here and now. One hundred per cent—permission!”

  So utterly confident did he appear to be, that only for the first time did I feel certain that he was handing out the truth.

  Nevertheless, for I was still suspicious of him, I dialed Colonial 0329. One eye ever on him.

  A woman with a nasal, whining, irritable voice came to the phone. I heard infants wailing somewhere in the background.

  “Does Peter Givney live there?” I asked.

  “Yes. O’ny he ain’t in.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Certain? Well, ain’t I jest been up to his room five minutes ago when another party called?”

  “I see. Well, can you tell me anything about him?”

  “No I can’t. An’ this ain’t no credit information bureau, neither. He jes’ rooms here. By hisself. If that’ll be any use to you. An’ there’s 40 other roomers in this here house. Some employed—an’ some not. But all payin’ their rent—or else!”

  “Are you the landlord? Or landlady?”

  “For Christ’s sake, mister, what is this? No, I ain’t the landlord or landlady. I’m just tendin’ th’ telephone tonight. And I ain’t gonna chase all over this here house lookin’ for the landlord, who wouldn’t know nothin’ anyway.”

  “O.K.!” I said hastily. “I guess that’s all I want to—no—wait—what kind of a looking man is this Givney?”

  “Listen, mister, make it snappy—I got my kids to tend to—make it snappy, or else come over here in person and squat in his room for him. He’s a sort of a runt, in one direction, if you want to know what he looks like, an’ sort of built like a gorilla in the other direction—crosswise. Looks like—like an ex-pug. And I don’t know what his grandmother died of, neither.”

  “O.K.!” I told her hastily. And hung up. For I could see that I had not only a virago on the end of that telephone line, but a very tired irritable virago, and one who was ready to launch out into one vitriolic tongue-lashing!

  “Well, Givney,” I said to the little man across from me, “so far you’ve told the truth. Now come on with the rest of it. Come to burgle my house?”

  He waxed sarcastic. “I wanted a cup o’ tea—and my black tea was all out—so I thought I’d step in—and get some green tea!”

  I smiled. “Tell that to the judge—and he’ll add 2 years on your sentence for impudence.” I paused. “But translating the tea story, Givney, into hard facts, those facts are, I rather take it, that you read in some St. Paul or Minneapolis paper, in connection with some recent story concerning myself, or the bookmaking game, the usual stock family history to the extent that my wife would be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, tonight? On her annual 3-day ‘novena’ at the Convent of—goddamn the filthy newsmongers,” I broke off. “Well, come on. Fill out the rest of the story.”

  He was stubbornly silent.

  “Come on, man. Speak up. This is the only chance you’ll ever have to talk yourself out of 5 years in Stillwater. Or 7—in case you hand the judge the green-tea story! For no matter what made you enter my house—your sentence isn’t going to be any different. Burglary—without a gun. 5 years. Contempt of court—green tea!—2 years.”

  He pursed his lips reflectively. “Well, aside from the green tea—for I ain’t telling that to any judges!—what you say is logic, Mr. King. Yeah, it’s logic. So all right. For I hear you saying I maybe got a chance to talk myself out. O-K! Maybe I can—at that. Sure, I saw that story that was in th’ Minneapolis Despatch just a week ago—which o’ course you saw yourself. So—”

  “No,” I told him. “I didn’t see it. Since, one week ago, I was in Frisco. And therefore reading only Frisco news.”

  “The hell!” he retorted. “The story said you were—

  “Yes, I know. But even the Minneapolis Despatch can be wrong sometimes!”

  “Ain’t it th’ truth?” he said delightedly. ‘That’s always what I said about that goddamned sheet. It’s—”

  “Never mind trying to fix your case up by being a professional agreer,” I warned him. “Get going! So there was a story about me a week ago, eh?”

  “Yes. And it—but I got it here now—the clipping, I mean—in my hip packet—if you want to see it. That is, I got all o’ the story but some fool tail end of it that spilled over inside on some inside page—which page was missing from the copy o’ the Despatch what I had. I kept th’ story because—”

  “Because it contained some valuable information, that’s undoubtedly why.”

  “Well, since you ain’t seen it, do you want to see it?” he asked undecidedly. “Though without your permission,” he explained, “I can’t dig it out. For,” he went hurriedly on, “I ain’t aiming to reach for my hip pocket—and then have you start sprinkling all the slugs out of that gat of yours, in the hopes of laying one in my carcass. For—”

  “For that profound insult,” I remarked dryly, “I ought to start shooting—now.”

  “Start—shooting—now?” he ejaculated, licking his lips fearfully. “What—what insult did I give you?”

  I nodded toward the silver trophy cup I had slid over to the right of the desk. “Lean forward,” I instructed him, “take up that trophy cup—turn it around so the engraved letters reach your optics!—and figure out, yourself, your own insult.”

  He reached forward gingerly, took the cup, and turned it clear around. And, reading them, raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  “Oh-oh! Champeen pistol shot of the Twin Cities Shooting Club. ‘Mortimer Q. King’”—now he was punctiliously pronoun­cing that “i” on which I had called him a while back—“‘First Prize!’ Oh-oh! I get it now—how I insulted you. But I didn’t mean nothing. And after all, Mr. King—shooting at me, y’ know, wouldn’t be like—like leveling your sights careful-like onto a bright lighted bull’s-eye—and pulling the old trigger when you get good and ready?”

  “Quite right,” I conceded. “And if I shot at you while I drew—I might have to shoot—twice—altogether. Yes. To ‘lay that one slug’!” I shook my head again. “But oh, that crack—about having to sprinkle all my ‘slugs’ out—to try and land just one—in your carcass. Even my own friends in the T-C-S Club would tell me that dirty crack warranted my letting fly on you.”

  “Let’s forget that,” he said hurriedly, evidently not so sure I was joking. “I’ll chop it down to—to two shots. Yes. Two. And now about that clipping again—in my back pocket. Do you want to see it?”

  “Not interested,” I told him. “Without even reading it, I can tell you that it started out on some fool subject or other—”

  “Yeah—that’s right.” He did indeed seem to be trying to be a professional agreer. “The police found some nitro out here on the prairie, and—”

  “Oh, they did, eh? Probably at least a full block from my place—yet I’ll bet the story was one quarter about the nitro­glycerine—one quarter about my house—one quarter about me—and one quarter about my wife?”

  “That’s—right,” he said wonderingly. “How—how do you know that—when you didn’t see the story?”

  I couldn’t help but laug
h at his very naïveté. “Givney, that’s the way most news stories are filled out. 10 per cent facts, padded out with personalities and life history of all the people even remotely concerned in ’em—that is, when the people themselves are in the public eye. So never mind the story. Go on with what you saw in it that made you decide to burgle my place.”

  “We-ell,” he said, “it says, further on in it, as how your wife goes ev’ry year and becomes a nun or somethin’—f’r three days—on October 21, 22, an’ 23—in the Convent of—of—now—”

  “St. Ethelreda,” I put in.

  “Yeah, that’s it! In Milwaukee. It says she does it, ev’ry year, in mem’ry of her old man, who give the convent to these here sisters of the—now—”

  “Ethelredan Order,” I illuminated.

  “Yes. An’ it said her pappy was sick over exactly those three days—and durin’ ’em he willed the Order that money for their convent.”

  I nodded slowly. “So far,” I told him, “the same old story that runs every time any member of this family even stubs his or her toe. And what else did the Minny Despatch have to say this time?”

  “Well—it says that you—‘Bring-a-Friend’ King, th’ bookie—‘Bring-a-Friend’ King, they called you!—was—listen, do you mind telling me why the papers call you ‘Bring-a-Friend’?”

  “Why?” I repeated. “Why, because I’ve always made it a point”—I started to explain, and then broke off, angry at myself for wasting words on him, and not at all realizing that before very long I would be answering that identical query—logical as it was to any non-Minneapolisan—put to me by another man—only a man who did not have to enter houses by their windows. “Never you mind asking questions,” I told him. “It’s you that’s on the witness stand just now. And what did the paper say about me?”

  “Well, it says you was alleeged—”

  “Alleged,” I corrected him. “That’s a famous new paper phrase designed to avoid libel suits. Alleged to what?”

  “Alleeged,” he went on stubbornly, “to be in a sanitarium down in Virginia somewheres, under a psoodaname—recuper­ating from some kind of rundown condition.”

  I laughed. “While unluckily for you, Givney, I was in San Francisco—which is just about as far as one can get from Minneapolis!—under a ‘psoodaname’ yes!—and hiding out from a threatened Senatorial Investigation subpoena. And reaching my house tonight from Weddles Street—to the north—all the while you were toting that ladder across the prairies of Hobury Heights—from the south. And—but where did you get that ladder?”

  He pointed across my shoulder at the window facing the prairies. “That unfinished house a block away.”

  “The Leightonstone house, eh? I thought so,” I nodded. “And how’d you make sure my servants here wouldn’t nab you?”

  “Well—nobody answered the phone—so I knew there wasn’t nobody here.”

  “And that’s logic!” I said, mimicking his own remark of a while back.

  “And,” I pressed on, “what did you expect to pick up here tonight?”

  “Listen,” he said gruffly, getting frankly angry, “are we rehearsing some kind o’ catychyzation that’s going to be all did anyway at my trial? If so—just cut it! Call the coppers—and be done. F’r I ain’t going to sit here all night and be baited by you.”

  “Come, come,” I chided. “Don’t get huffy. I’m not a bad fellow—I’m a pretty good guy at times—and this is the one time in your life that you want to make friends with me.” I watched him narrowly.

  And then continued.

  “Confess though now—and remember, it makes no difference in your jail sentence whether—for instance—you just came in here to pick up yonder worthless skull—” I pointed to the brick mantel back of him, which held that object—“to sell, for five dollars or so, to some medical specialties dealer out near the Minneapolis County Hospital—or whether you came here to pick up the famous diamonds which my wife, quite naturally, could not carry into a convent—when she’s on a 3-day ‘novena’—in sackcloth and ashes—and praying for her father. So confess,” I continued. “Was it the diamonds—which were duly catalogued a year or so ago—at the time of that customs dispute on the star-shaped tiara we bought in Brussels?—or was it—well—just the paper knife in this open drawer here, the ink alongside it, and the other things in this upstairs library you wanted?”

  His answer was noncommittal.

  “I ain’t confessing nothing now. You’re only baiting me, Mr. King. So ring up the cops—and be done with it. Or—or let me go. What’s the idea o’ all the gabfest between us, anyway?” He paused. “You’re baiting me, that’s plain. You’ll be callin’ the coppers shortly anyhow. So let’s—get going. Besides,” he added quizzically, “all the good cells’ll be filled with drunks in another hour.”

  I sat back reactively. In something less than 6 hours from now—by the clock ticking over there on the mantel—the notorious English Negress, Jemimah Cobb—keeper of London’s worst dive, and murderess of her rich Chinese lover—was to hang in Pentonville Prison, London. And was—according to today’s afternoon newspapers—and as a revenge against the entire white race!—going to name—when she stepped on the gallows, and had her opportunity to say the usual “last words”—the “white American” to whom she was legally married, as well as give the location of the mutually signed marriage certificate—all of which made her, so she claimed, an American citizen, and because of which—so the ignorant black fool fatuously believed!—America and England would go to war. War—over a degenerate black murderess!

  But in naming that man—and giving the location of that double-signed certificate, to be reproduced in the world’s 10,000 newspapers—Jemimah Cobb would, as I happened to know, smash a woman’s soul. A fine highly bred white woman who had subsequently married that man. And which man—as I happened also to know—had never, for adequate reasons, bothered to obtain a divorce from Jemimah Cobb. And thus that white woman would, upon that gallows-revelation—carried in the news­papers of every hamlet in America, and on the broadcasts of every radio station—learn for the first time that she had been, from the very second of her own marriage, a bigamous wife—in short, no wife at all!—and that the man she had once honored with her hand had once in his own life stooped so low as to become the husband of the world’s most notorious Negress.

  And upon all this I reflected. While, at the same time, I considered the man across from me. For the more I thought of the unusual situation here tonight, the more I felt convinced that this man was not prowling the place for mere articles of bric-a-brac such as skulls, sellable at most for $5—and trophy cups worth $3—but for something—something!—something perhaps of real value; and again perhaps not!—yet something he positively knew he could lay his hands on, once inside.

  And so it might be—yes, it might be!—that he could be the solution for stopping that mad Negress over there in London from wrecking a human soul.

  For I—I was the white American who had married that black degenerate wench in the long long ago!

  CHAPTER II

  Chapter Senegambian!

  But not at all the sordid story, however—my marriage to that black wretch—that one might expect!

  For I had been in London there, in that long ago, and wandering curiously in Quarter Moon Road which then housed Jemimah’s dive as of that period—unknowing either of the nature of the street, much less the fact that Jemimah Cobb’s place was on it. I was, of course, not at all that day as I was today—for I was “stony” broke—just come to London on a cattleboat!—but not minding that condition in the least, when such curious streets as this could be seen for mile after mile after mile. And there—in Quarter Moon Road—I had been taken suddenly sick. Food poisoning plus—as it later eventuated—typhoid fever! No different—not a bit—than catching the double-1 on the very first toss of a pair of cubes! And I’d knocked desperat
ely at the door of Number 17. Only to tumble ill—unconscious—over the threshold. And be put into bed. In Jemimah Cobb’s own great canopied fourposter. For Jemimah Cobb was one who had to avoid all such things as brought police investigation! And she it had been who had nursed me through that illness. Fallen in love with me, moreover, as it later appeared—though little com­pliment to myself. And it was because of that strange Indian drug she administered to me, after I was nearly recovered, that I had permitted myself to be joined to her in marriage. Seen myself joined, is better! For even today it was still all a weird foggish nightmare. My hand in her jet black one. The tall black preacher standing by, near the fourposter, with Bible in hand, and cer­tificate waiting for us both to sign. How she had obtained the necessary license I will never know. But there I was, being legally joined to that black African mammal! The first man—white, black, yellow or otherwise—according to her gleeful declaration to the black clergyman and myself—a true declaration, too, since she was drunk and therefore veracious—ever to be joined to her legally! And in less than 24 hours later I had emerged from the fog. Puzzled. Though not altogether ungrateful at that! Because, plainly, she had saved my life. And then—three days later—had come the news from Jemimah—plus the newspapers containing the very stories!—first, that the Reverend Amos Applecup who had married us—and who was, incidentally, one of her many strange and perverted clients—had drowned in the Thames; and second, that a disastrous fire in the London Marriage Records Bureau had wiped out all the records of all marriages performed over the past 10 days. A warning, of course, to all persons and firms involved in real-estate transactions during that period otherwise to confirm full validity or dower rights. And so, three days—five days—a week longer I had lingered in her exotic private quarters. Getting my strength. Then vanishing silently out of her picture. As no doubt she half anticipated all along I might! Vanished not by a first-class ship passage bought with any of the filthy money strewn all over her quarters—money obtained in her hideous business—but by shipping as a freight-checker, on the American freighter Nimrod—bound for home. For America!