The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  The Judge rapped his desk smartly and interpolated a remark of his own.

  “Here, you!—none of that here!” He motioned to the bailiff, who led the old man back to his seat and stood The Eel up fronting the bench again.

  “Now, you,” the Judge proceeded, fixing the flabbergasted Eel with a cold, suspicious eye, “what’s this stuff about a tattoo mark you say you didn’t steal? Come clean now, or—”

  But The Eel complied readily enough—eagerly, in fact. He went on to tell the gaping roomful how, about a year before, having had his left forearm horribly burnt in a lodging-house holocaust, he had been taken to the County Hospital. How the “croakers” there, despairing of healing it, had advertised in the Chicago papers for volunteers to give up as many square inches of skin as they could for grafting onto their patient’s burns. How among those “dead game sports” who came forward to help him, The Eel, “like real guys,” was one young fellow who had made the condition of his sacrifice a peculiar one: that the “big docs” use only that portion of his arm’s cuticle covered by the tattooed design now on his, The Eel’s, own arm, the fellow saying “his folks hadn’t liked it on him.”

  “No,” The Eel said, in answer to the old man’s excited interruption, he “never did get to know that guy’s right name.” But the County Hospital people might know who he was, The Eel added.

  Other explanations followed, and, after some argument, the Judge reluctantly suspended The Eel’s sentence, at the pleadings of the distracted but hopeful father, paroling the “dip” to the complainant in the case in order that he might assist Jonas in locating the “donor” of the much-discussed star and crescent.

  “But mind you,” he warned The Eel, as he prepared to go out with his new-found guardian, “if you’re ever up before this court again, after all this good man is doing for you, you’ll get no mercy from me! It’s the last call for you. I’m taking a big chance letting you off this time, but never again!”

  Inquiry at the County Hospital by Jonas Brown and the really grateful Eel, that same afternoon, elicited the discouraging information that—though they remembered there, distinctly, the odd circumstance of the tattoo’s transference to the Eel’s person—they could not furnish either the name or address of the original possessor of the grafted design—he having bluntly refused to divulge either, saying they could either take it or leave it, but must leave his identity entirely out of the case.

  Outside, The Eel agreed, at the impassioned insistency of Jonas Brown, to continue with him in the rather hopeless search, but refusing all offers of the latter to pay him for his time.

  “Now see here, old man,” said that supposedly slippery person, “that kid of yours, if he was yours, done me a white turn oncet—and you bet I’ll do as much for him! If that roll you still got on you is going to him, I’ll do my goddamnedest to spot him for you pronto. And so long as I didn’t get it, I’ll take goddamn good care no other grifter gets it away from you—see? Come along now. I’ll take you back to your lil’ ol’ hole in the wall—and tomorrow we’ll make a regular day of it.”

  “You’re a good honest boy; I know I can trust you,” replied the simple-hearted countryman, naïvely; and for the first time in ages The Eel turned aside his face and blushed. Then his form stiffened with a newborn, silent resolution; he seized the old man’s horny hand and shook it fiercely, his eyes blinking rapidly.

  Next day the still hunt went on, along new and devious ways known only to such as The Eel; but night brought only new doubts, new perplexities to the twain. And so the hopeless yet dogged search dragged on for uncounted days.

  At about 7:30 p.m. several weeks later, thinking it might take the old man’s mind off its long worrying and fears for a time, The Eel proposed that the two go over near the Star and Garter Burlesque Theatre at West Madison and Halsted Streets.

  “I got a hunch,” he insinuated as an excuse, “that we’ll do better if we just drift along for a while and keep our lamps peeled. I figured it out oncet, in my own ‘profesh,’ that you meet twice as many people just standing still on a busy corner, or near a theaytre, as you’d do if you kept moving—for they pass you from all directions to oncet, don’t you see? And in front of a burleycue running a new and hot show is another godd—er—darned good place to drift into ’em, just before or after a p’formance. We’ve tried about every reas’nable thing, Mr. Brown—now let’s just trust to chanct for oncet.”

  Dutifully, Jonas Brown agreed to his more sophisticated co-searcher’s suggestion, and they repaired at once to the vantage ground proposed. The Eel bought two tickets, “so’s the cops can’t tell us to move on,” and rejoined Jonas at the curbline to watch the slowing augmenting crowd.

  A Lincoln car, containing two men, chugged noisily up to the near-by corner, and deposited one of them; and then made off; but neither of the two watchers noted it consciously—their eyes were all for the ingoing audience gathering at the “burleycue’s” doors, expectant too of the other audience soon to belch forth upon them.

  Suddenly the old man felt a hand laid on his shoulders from behind. He jumped, and the “dip” whirled snarling on the intruder. Then came surprising words.

  “Why hello—Father!” came the astonished voice from the passenger deposited by the departed Lincoln. “What on earth are you doing in Chicago?”

  “Why—why—it’s Dan!—it’s Danny himself at last, thank God!” burst out Jonas Brown, and almost flung himself upon the newcomer in near collapse.

  The Eel stood open-mouthed, hardly breathing in his excitement; but a cloud quickly came over his expression. He plucked at the old man’s sleeve warningly, trying to edge in between the two.

  “Wait a minute now—wait a minute,” he interposed. “Say, Mr. Brown—are you sure you’re right this time?” He eyed the stalwart third member appraisingly, even hostilely.

  Jonas Brown turned quickly to the newcomer, then glanced inquiringly back at The Eel. “I never thought he’d be so big,” he said proudly; “but he has grown a lot since I last saw him. Why, don’t you recognize him?” he asked the latter. “He—he gave you his own skin, you know, that time; he’s—”

  “Never saw this here guy in all my life!” coolly announced The Eel.

  Jonas Brown stared helplessly at The Eel.

  “But—but the tattoo mark—the star and crescent he—” he sputtered.

  “Say, Father,” cut in the larger man, “I don’t quite tumble to what you two are trying to get at—but if you’re talking about that old tattoo-mark you licked me for, why, here it is, same as ever.” And he laughed. And pulling back his left coat sleeve and rolling up his cuff, he showed—an exact duplicate of the star and crescent, line for line, then ornamenting the arm of the “dip”! The two other men stared with unbelieving eyes.

  “No,” the newcomer added, “your peculiar-looking ‘friend’ here is right, Dad; he never did see me before—so far as I know.”

  Then Jonah Brown and the now-mollified “dip” told the astounded Dan the whole story of their first encounter and the subsequent search; he, in his turn, explaining that the circus-following “artist” who had tattooed him had had only five or six designs he knew how to prick with the needle, and that probably any number of other boys, in many places, had received the same distinguishing disfigurement from his bungling hands.

  “And Mother?” ended up Dan. “How is she?”

  “She died last year, Danny boy,” said the father. “We didn’t know where to find you, and she kept asking for you day and night—day and night.” His voice shook. “And just before she passed away she called me to her bedside and made me promise to find you, and—and to tell you she sent you her undying love; and—and to—to ask you to take good—good care of your poor old father for the rest of his days—for—for her sake. Oh, Danny!—Danny! Can you forgive me? I didn’t mean you any wrong—and I’ve suffered so long for that one act of mistaken co
rrection! Even the farm is gone now—and I have only you!”

  The old man was weeping openly, and Dan choked back the horrible hurt that welled up from his own lonely heart. He patted his father on the back reassuringly and said:

  “Never mind, Dad. All I’ve got is half yours right now. It isn’t much—just a little auto repair shop and twenty-car garage, about a mile from here, but you’re sure welcome.”

  The Eel pricked up his ears and grinned behind his hand.

  “Why, why Danny boy,” said Jonas Brown, “you didn’t think your poor old father would come to you broke, did you? I’d—I’d die first.” And the old man pulled his old well-stuffed wallet laboriously forth from under his coat tails, and held it up before the paralyzed Danny. “There’s just $7700 there, Danny boy; I sold the old farm, as I couldn’t bear to live there all alone any longer—and I had to go and find you somewhere. I’ll put that in as my half, and we’ll just expand your business—I’ve always heard there was good money to be made in it—and I’m now used to handling gas-engines and the like—on the farm.”

  “Well I’ll be darned!” exploded Dan. “You dear old rapscallion! I might have known you’d deliver the goods—you’re my father, after all, at that!”

  “But, why—why didn’t you write me, Danny boy, all these long years?” queried the old man, half resentfully. “We thought—”

  “Oh, I don’t know—you know how proud some boys are when they skip out from the old home without stopping to say good-by, or anything—won’t write back till they’ve made their fortunes, or at least made good somehow. And it is only just here lately that I’ve been able to get a real foothold and start a business for myself.”

  The Eel had begun to sidle away, feeling decidedly, woefully out of the picture in the present reel; but the old man sharply called him back.

  “Here, son—what you leaving me now for?” he expostulated. “You told me you were crazy about autos—and wanted to get into that business if I could fix it so the police would let you alone. You’ve got mighty nimble fingers, as I happen to know,” he laughed happily, “and you’re just going right along now and work for me and Dan—ain’t he, Danny boy!”

  “Okay by me,” replied that hope-elated young business man. “And now that we’re all happy—let’s go on in and see this wild show, The Girls from Oskaloosa—what? Follow me!” And they did!

  Towards the close of the next-to-last “blackout” The Eel asked them to excuse him for a few minutes—he wanted, he said, to go out and telephone a certain party. He did not return immediately, and when the house finally lit up, after the last “blackout,” for the ensemble and final exodus, the two others went to find him outside. They waited around for fifteen minutes, but no Eel slid into view.

  “Guess we might as well mosey up the sidewalk 20 feet or so,” suggested Dan, “and get out of the way of the crowds coming in for the next show.”

  Which they did. And another five minutes passed. And no Eel yet.

  And so, just to while away the time, Dan asked his father for a real peep at the wonderful seventy-seven hundred “iron men” he had in ambush under his coat tails. In the semi-seclusion of the doorway of a deserted store, Dan opened the old-fashioned wallet and peered into it, then inserted a tentative finger.

  His face went white; he grasped the old man’s arm impul­sively, rigidly.

  “Why—why Father, there’s not one cent in it!—only a couple of soiled handkerchiefs!” he gasped, and drew them out to the old man’s astounded view. “This sure is one hell of a party—at the break-up!”

  The old man seemed too dumfounded to speak. Then suddenly the same two words came to the lips of both: “The Eel!” “The Eel!”

  “Probably another reversion to type,” half sneered Dan. “I thought this Eel bird seemed too good to be true! You can’t reform some of these crooks—it don’t last.”

  “Why, Danny,” defended his father, “he swore he couldn’t do enough for you for saving his life with your own skin, and for me for keeping him out of jail.”

  “Yeah, sure!—he’d feel that way then, all right, but now that he’s found out that it wasn’t me who got ‘skinned’ for him, and he’s found me for you, he’d think he’d done about enough—and that ‘business was business’—even with a crook. No, we won’t see The Eel any more—not if he sees us first, we won’t!” Then: “I suppose now we’ll have to go back to the police and tell them you’ve lost the whole seventy-seven hundred again,” he growled, sotto voce. Though he was, indeed, at a loss to understand his father’s taking the second theft by that same pampered Eel so coolly.

  “Seventy-seven hundred dollars!” exclaimed Jonas Brown. “Why, Danny—your old father must be getting a mite absent-minded—there was only about sixteen dollars in that wallet, all in one-dollar bills. You see I forgot, in the excitement of finding you and all, to tell you that The Eel left me for an hour or two down on State Street this afternoon; and who should I run into there but Silas Whiffin, the old banker from our home town. Of course Silas wanted to know all about what I’d been up to all alone here in this big city, and before I got through he had the whole story. Well, he was horrified when he found out I was still carrying around all that money on me—and he wouldn’t listen to any talk at all about The Eel’s being my protection for it. Even though, Danny, The Eel has been letting me take charge of something he calls his—his fall money—a folded hundred-dollar note, Danny, which I’ve got in my watch pocket. Anyway, Silas pulled me right along with him, in that masterful way he always had with us country folks, and—I’ll swan!—before I knew what happened to me, I’d put $7700 of my $7716 cash into registered Government bonds. In fact, here they are, Danny—” And Jonas Brown pulled a big official-looking envelope out of his innocent-looking old inside coat pocket, and tendered it to his son, quite apologetically.

  “Well—I’ll be damned!” said Dan Brown. And shook his head admiringly. “And so, Dad, with The Eel slithering out of this, as he has tonight—and kissing his ‘fall money’ good-by—you’re only $84 to the good! Listen Dad, a few more weeks in Slickville here, and you’ll be able to—”

  “To what, Danny?”

  “To go out and work the Madison Street cars yourself—just as friend Eel does. Come on—and let’s you and I get down to some legitimate business!”

  CHAPTER XIX

  The Set-Up

  I looked up, with a half smile, from the manuscript.

  “Okay!” I said.

  “You mean,” Steenburg put in, delightedly, “that—that it’s great stuff?”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t great stuff. Its viewpoint prowls around and about like an alley cat ranging all the garbage cans in a square block! And some of its expressions remind me a bit of the old ‘mellerdrammers’ given on the Showboat, that used to be anchored off Barkley Street in the River here. But the yarn has a good beginning and a neat ending—and enough twists and turns in its ‘innards’ that with a little ironing-out by Sol Steenburg, it ought to certainly go over. Considering the thousand and nineteen pulp-paper magazines on the market just now.” I gazed down on the script. “No, your ‘Big Shoes’ is going to click. Which’ll mean the end of the criminal game for him—whether he really has got that girl-kid—or whether he hasn’t. And, since reading the script, I somehow fancy he has.” I riffled over the typewritten pages again. “Only—tell him to do some tales about the dramatic things he knows—instead of about farmers’ lives. Though, come to think of it, he is a farmer at that.”

  And I handed the script back to Steenburg.

  “I’m glad,” was all he said. And he truly seemed overjoyed.

  A long pause fell between us now. And he finally broke it, with a direct question.

  “Will you—will you be going down yourself, Mr. King?—picking up the skull there in Evanston?—and making the meet in Chicago? Or will you be sending—a messenger?”


  “What does it matter?” I queried. “So long as Senor ‘Big Shoes’ gets his precious evidence?” I reflected for a moment. And then looked up. “There’s quite nothing in the way of my taking care of the whole thing myself,” I said. “For Mrs. King will be busy as all get-out on her first day back here. And I’ve a half dozen friends I could put in a day with in Chi. However, since you asked—well, I’m pretty certain I’ll be sending a messenger.”

  “The girl with—with the lavender gripsack?” he asked.

  “Forget the girl with the lavender gripsack!” I said. But realizing that that possibility which I had lightly and half-facetiously broached a few minutes back was now due to be religiously conveyed to the mysterious ‘Big Shoes’ down in Illinois, I amended my words. “Oh,” I said casually, “you can tell your client—yes—that if nobody appears in that block with a crimson box—then ’twill be the gal with the lavender gripsack he’s to approach. But I’ll aim to follow our matters exactly the way he evidently wants them: a man—no woman; and a crimson shoebox—no gripsack! Okay?”

  “Quite! But you couldn’t say, for sure,” Steenburg inquired troubledly, “that you will be sending a messenger—not that it matters, of course?”

  “No, I can’t say,” I told Steenburg truthfully. “But you can tell your ‘Big Shoes’—when you talk to him tonight or early tomorrow morning, on long distance—that regardless of who shows up with the crimson box in that block between noon and 1 tomorrow—or even with lavender gripsack!—yes!—it isn’t going to matter. For the receptable—be what it may—and colored whatever it be!—will have in it the skull—and let ‘Big Shoes’ be sure to have his five hundred. Plus a few odd dollars for possible final reckoning. For this, after all, Steenburg, is going to be cold business; don’t forget how his tribe have taken me for plenty in my day—many times five hundred. But I may likely send a messenger. A man who may uncover some certain vital information for me tonight, in Hob—that is—in Minneapolis. And, if he does so, I’ll simply pay him by giving him the skull—and the dope by which he can convert it into five hundred cold. Plus return fare to Minneapolis. Without, of course, telling him any of your inside facts. For I don’t need the five hundred myself—and it still looks just a little like—well—bloody money to me. Yes. On the other hand, so far as this messenger goes, well—he may be dead. And lying out on the prairies here—this very minute. In which case I myself will take—”