The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Steenburg was just coming to life.

  “He—he may—may be dead?” he ejaculated. “Your messenger may already be—Wha-a-a’ do you mean, Mr. King?”

  “Just what I said. This chap may be dead—and quite unable to travel southward. You see he—well—he has enemies. And he’s expected here—later tonight. And he always cuts across the prairies. And his enemies may follow him. And shoot him dead. Yes, he warned me of that. So—if he doesn’t show up by midnight—which is one hour before 1 a.m., when the last plane and last trains leave for Chicago—then his body is lying out there in the blackness—with a bullet through its forehead. Though it won’t be found till tomorrow. And daylight dawns. In which case—his non-appearance by midnight, that is—I’ll have to go myself. And don’t be surprised if, in Buffalo, you read about the finding of such body.”

  “Jesus—Christ, Mr. King, this—this is a most dramatic thing—I’ve walked into. They—they won’t shoot me, will they—his enemies?—when I leave here?”

  “Hell no,” I said, realizing that my too-elaborate fiction which might account for the results of any possible scuffle tonight between myself and The Man With the Magic Eardrums, there in the closet—and perhaps the latter’s demise—was too florid. “No, it’s—it’s inside bookie stuff only.” I regarded Steenburg critically. For this question was important. “And I suppose,” I queried, “if by any chance his body were to be found out there—on the prairies tomorrow—and the police questioned me as to whether I heard anything tonight—or saw anything—that you’ll come forward—as a material witness—to corroborate my words to you—about his enemies?”

  “Listen, Mr. King,” said Steenburg agitatedly, passing a hand over his brow, “if—if they find two dozen bodies out there tomorrow morning—I don’t know anything—about you—nor your house. Or anything. If he’s the cause of your being jimmed up into any mess, don’t, for Cri’ sakes, call on me. For I—”

  “But,” I told Steenburg pleasantly, “you said, five minutes ago, that if I ever got into a jam, you’d—”

  He shook his head firmly. “This is different, I tell you. I’d do anything for you—yes—sub rosa. But not—in court. Or publicly. For I can’t even afford to know Mortimer King. Because of Father, you know. He—”

  “I get you! Again—as before. Well, let’s just presume this chap is a good boy—and doesn’t get rambuncti—that is, doesn’t get shot at—and that he successfully unearths a certain piece of information for me—and traipses down there to Chicago—and gets the five hundred. In which case, since you will be talking once more by phone to ‘Big Shoes’—and he may want all possible last-minute dope on the bird who’s to carry the crimson box, this fellow—if he comes—well, you have my description, so now I’d better give you his.” Steenburg’s ears rose markedly, and he took out a fountain pen. “This rather likely—and possible—messenger of mine,” I said, “will be dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit. With baggy knees. And will wear a checked cap. And a red tie. And will have a round face. And—and will murder the King’s English!”

  “Okay!” nodded Steenburg, putting down, in a notebook, the last of a series of evidently stenographic notes.

  And now, decidedly apprehensive, he looked at the clock on the mantel behind him.

  “Well, Mr. King—seems like everything’s set. It’s 11:16 now. And my plane—I’m plenty scared of planes, I don’t mind telling you, but having stuck here in Minneapolis till the last dying moment, I got to go back to Buffalo that way—goes at 1 a.m. sharp. Though fortunately for me, a whole troop of planes are going back east—most empty—thanks to some trade convention that opened here today. Anyway—I’m going to get now. Which’ll leave you in charge of your castle—and give you the chance to talk with your messenger—when—that is, if—he gets here—yes—and get him off on the 1 a.m. plane to Chi.”

  “Oh—yeah?” I said sardonically. “I think I spoke of a plane—and trains. If I have to go—it’ll be by plane, yes. But if he goes—he’ll go by train—and he’ll sit up all night, to boot!”

  Steenburg stroked his chin puzzledly.

  “Twice tonight, Mr. King, you spoke of ‘trains’—going out for Chi—at 1 a.m. But I guess you meant just ‘train’—yes? For I’ve been studying timetables between Minneapolis and Chicago like nobody’s business—figuring whether I could by any chance at all go down there—and get back to Buffalo at 9 a.m. tomorrow—which I couldn’t—and of course there’s only one train—at 1 a.m.”

  “I did speak of ‘trains,’” I admitted. “But it was only a mind-slip—due to the fact that the Scotchman’s Special goes out at 1 a.m.—as well as the Minny-Chi Limited. The Scotchman’s Special being a de luxe train which one of my bookies—by name, Jock MacTavish—always rides—when he goes down to Chicago to see his mother.”

  “Jock—MacTavish?” Steenburg commented. “I—I can’t imagine a guy named Jock MacTavish riding a luxury train. Even if there was one, other than the Minny-Chi Limited. No, a Scotchman—riding a luxury train—”

  “This train,” I explained, with a smile, “is the famous Minneapolis-Chicago Non-Stop Perishable Through Freight! Which—as I understand it—makes up in the Outer Belt railroad yards along a board fence, along New Deal Street, every night—and gets into Chicago—so Mac tells me!—at 10 a.m. to the second. My understanding is that all a man does—in fact, all a dozen hoboes do every night—for my shrewd Jock got his info originally from a hobo!—is to flop over some low fence at New Deal Street at just about 3 minutes to 1—pick out a comfortable set of rods under some box-car—then, toot-toot!—and Chicago, for late breakfast, at Pittsburgh Joe’s—at 10 a.m.”

  “I get it now,” Steenburg laughed. “Well, as far as I’m concerned—there’s still only one train for Chicago—going out of Minneapolis—at 1 a.m. Even if your MacTavish has a special one of his own. And—”

  He checked the clock now by his own watch. And rose—with alacrity.

  “I’m off—Mr. King! I don’t honestly like the idea, don’t you know, of those birds—gunning for your baggy-kneed friend. I sort of think I’d like ‘out’—of Hobury Heights.”

  He fumbled in his breast pocket, and brought up a sealed envelope.

  “Here’s the brief dope,” he said, “I typed out—for the ‘meet.’ It gives everything. The name ‘Big Shoes’ is to introduce himself by. Which will be the first key by which you—or your man—or even your gal with the lavender gripsack!—will know that everything’s oke—so far!—as to his—‘Big Shoes’’—identity. And the few further ‘key’ questions that’re to be asked—and answered—both sides. Innocent like, of course—in case some nosey guy is standing off to one side. And I trust you’ll destroy it?—after its brief contents are memorized?” I nodded assurance on that score. On which he handed his envelope to me, and I put it in my breast pocket. “And if, by any chance at all,” Steenburg went on, “‘Big Shoes’ couldn’t or didn’t show—well, of course in that case your messenger would have to contact you by phone—and you, in turn, would have to phone me—at Colvin Parkway, Buffalo. And I, in turn, ‘Big Shoes.’ And arrange a subsequent ‘meet.’ Calling you back here then—and you, in turn, your messenger. Like going around a circle two ways—yes—frontwards—and then back. However, ‘Big Shoes’ will show. I guarantee that. And he’ll—But listen—don’t tell your messenger, will you, about this—this Scotchman’s Special? For the streetcar that brought me out here tonight must have passed that very point where it makes up—at least we went over a long long viaduct—” I nodded. “—and the conductor, once we were across it, called out ‘New Deal Street’—” I nodded again. “—and, that point being therefore only about 20 minutes at most from here, well—your messenger might just take a chance to cram the railroad fare you give him into his pocket—leap off the streetcar—and ride that S-S into Chicago; and he might get plucked off somewhere between here and Chicago—and everything would be�
��up the spout.”

  I had risen as Steenburg did. “I won’t tell him,” I assured him. “Though the Scotchman’s Special, as I understand it, doesn’t stop for a single second between Minneapolis and Chicago—lest the Minnesota eggs—shipped at the high rate of 3 cents a dozen—hatch into chicks; and the Minnesota Guernsey milk turn sour—and the Minnesota onions grow sprouts. A fact! My messenger will go in state, all right. So don’t worry.”

  Steenburg thrust out his hand, relieved. And I shook it. And he turned toward his hat on the near-by rack. Then turned back to me.

  “Incidentally, Mr. King—and I daresay I should have mentioned this long before—your frau will be ringing you from Wabansia Falls Junction, Minnesota—within a few minutes.”

  “Yes?” I said in surprise. “But how the devil do you know that?”

  “Because,” he explained, “on that last telephone call I made here tonight, I accidentally got into a long-distance telephone call she was trying to make here, en route; that is, I’m sure it was she, and I’m presuming it was long-distance! At least the feminine voice said to the operator: ‘No, it won’t be of any use to call me back when that line is clear, because I won’t be here—where I’m calling from. But I’ll call again at—let’s see?—11:30.’ And since, Mr. King, that Chicago and North Lakes Special stands at Wabansia Falls Junction for 15 minutes—and at around 11:30 moreover—and I’d just read that item in the Sun—well, I just put two and two together that the calling party must be she. Of course I’d have gotten off and given her to you—only the connection went out before I had a chance. And then—I was talking to you. Or, rather, to your man.”

  “I see,” I nodded, curious about the call. Though, of course, the call could, in reality, have come from many, many parties, I was confident that Steenburg’s accurate deductions about it were entirely correct. And I added the only explanation that occurred to me. “She probably wants to instruct one of our servants about something—in advance of her coming. She’s not trying to contact me, because she doesn’t anticipate my being here tonight. However—I’ll look out for her call.”

  He looked at his watch again. And got his hat himself. And so I conducted him down the stairs to the front door. And let him out. And the last I saw of him, he was trudging up the narrow sidewalk between the dark lots, looking apprehensively to both sides of himself.

  The minute I got back into the library, I fished out of the wastebasket that confounded skull which Speevy had brought here. And holding it up—face, that is, up to the overhead lights—confirmed completely what Steenburg had told me: for the shingle-like hanging appendage on the left side of the nose aperture was missing entirely on the right side—and the structures back inside of that nose—on the right—were plentifully cut away—dear to a cavern back almost under the brain pan. And I turned it over. And, had I had any doubts thus far about Steenburg’s story of the Polish doctor on Queen Avenue, South, and Rozalda, and the Negro who was to deliver the skull back here, and all that—my doubts were completely dispelled: for printed there, in India ink, over the bullet hole which had been the cause of Speevy’s bringing the skull here originally, were the identical letters ‘M.K.’ which Steenburg had stated Doctor Sciecinskiwicz had put there for the guidance of the Negro’s personal delivery.

  Gone—one lucky fetish!

  And—but then, for the first time in several minutes, I thought of my prisoner—in the closet.

  And made haste to release him.

  CHAPTER XX

  The Stubborn One

  I unlocked the door. He still sat hunched against the rear wall, knees drawn up under hands, just as I had left him—though blinking a bit as the light came in on him, and carrying on his round face that immeasurably blank deaf man’s look.

  “Come on out,” I ordered him. But my words were lost on him, particularly with my back to the light. So I raised my hand. And beckoned him out.

  And so out he came at last. Rubbing his eyes. I was already over at the table. And in the swivel chair once more, just as I had been when last we talked. Watching him emerge, and at the same time transferring his patent eardrums from the drawer to the table. From whence I slid them over in front of the gilt-legged chair which, just five minutes or less ago, had been supporting the person of one Sol Steenburg of Buffalo, New York. I pointed at the eardrums. And he nodded.

  He crossed the space intervening between himself and the gilt-legged chair, and taking up the eardrums inserted them in his ears.

  “Jesus!” he commented. “But they do feel good. Comes a hundred noises—again—that make me feel like a guy who’s alive.” Hesitant, seemingly, as one who hasn’t been instructed to do so, he dropped down on the gilt-legged chair.

  “Then,” I informed him, “with the old ears properly ‘bewitched’ again, you’re all nicely set—to perform that little exhibition job you agreed to do awhile back.”

  “Well,” he answered, with a shrug of his stocky shoulders, “I said I’d try.”

  “Though before you do,” I queried, “what’s that—leaking out of your ‘hankie’ pocket—there?”

  For indeed something was leaking out! A small newspaper clipping—with very ragged rough-torn edges—it appeared to be about an inch in depth—had, thanks doubtlessly to his having sat all “screwched up” on the floor in that closet, worked up in that pocket to where one of its ends now peeped more than a half inch over the pocket’s rim.

  He looked down at the half-emerged clipping. Painfully. “Oh—that?” he said, with manifest embarrassment. “Oh that—that ain’t nothing.” He poked it hurriedly down in the pocket. “Now let’s see—now about this safe—”

  “The safe will be here,” I told him dryly, “for a few minutes more.” For I was curious as to why he’d told me he had a huge clipping—when this one I’d glimpsed was only an inch deep. “Come on—dig it out. What story is that?”

  A deep crimson flamed over his round face, taking in even his ears.

  “It—it ain’t nothing,” he said desperately, “but just—just something—something I tore out of the evenin’ paper—th’ World—tonight on the way out here—come on, now—let’s—let’s get going.”

  “Put—that—clipping—down—here!” I ordered him peremp­torily. In view of the manner in which he was making most valiant efforts to talk and virtually laugh it off.

  “It ain’t nothing, I tell you,” he insisted. “It—”

  “Put it down here—on this table,” I said. “Or else—” I broke off, and put my hand in the pocket where the gun was.

  He gave a helpless gesture with his two hands. And laid the clipping midway of the table. At which I drew it over—the while he gazed at me with the most sheepish expression I had ever seen on a man’s face. And with the corner of one eye on him—and my other on the clipping—I read it—in toto. It ran:

  CLOWNS HIS WAY OUT OF A $50 FINE

  Peter Givney, occupation given as “unemployed,” and residence as The Workers’ Rest, 2375 South Humboldt Street, was released this morning in Misdemeanor Court by virtue of having made the Judge laugh. Givney was arrested last night by “Long John” van Critchford, the famous 7-foot-high traffic officer stationed in front of Donaldson’s Glass House, at Nicollet and Hennepin Avenues, who, coming back to his traffic post from a cup of coffee in a near-by restaurant, found Givney stationed there and imitating him in controlling traffic. Givney pleaded in court that he had had one too many drinks. Judge Fellows, presiding, asked him to show the court exactly how he had imitated Long John. Which Givney thereupon reluctantly did. The sight of the pudgy little squat man that Givney is, imitating the tall thin officer, and the latter’s long-armed signals to traffic, made the entire courtroom titter, and the Judge smile, and the latter said, at the end of the pantomime: “If a traffic officer hadn’t been down-right insolent to me this morning, Givney, I’d hand you a $50 fine and costs. As it is—why don’t y
ou get a job as a clown? Discharged!”

  When the hearing was over, reporters, assigned to Misdemeanor Court, asked Long John, known to be the holder of a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard, for a “philosophical expression” of comment concerning the “clown” decision. Long John’s reply was: “Okay, boys! I’m just on my way out now to call up a friend. But I’ll gladly pause a second to give you a truly philosophical and even academic comment—on the hearing just completed. Partic­ularly since my comment involves the very friend I’m just about to call up! Well, I see you have your pencils ready; so here is my comment: A very good friend, whom I am just about to call up, is deeply indebted to me. This friend is a likely runner-up on the National Heavyweight Champion­ship. He weighs 240 pounds stripped. And both of his fists are like hams. He lives at the Workers’ Rest, in a room on the first floor that faces the front door. And he has insomnia! That’s all, boys. Good day.”

  “So—” I said, looking up from the clipping—and before I told him precisely who the man was whom he’d imitated, “our Petie is a clown, eh?” And he was already reaching forth for the clipping with the avidity of a man making a collection of favorable publicity to show someday to his great-grandchildren!

  “No clown,” he mumbled. “No. No clown. I—I just pulled some of the motions that goddamned human windmill down there in front o’ Donaldson’s Glass House pulls—and the people in court, they seemed to think it was funny.”

  I laughed. And waved his reaching hand warningly downward. And added: “And I could kiss you, Petie—for your stunt this morning in court.”