The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “And now, Givney, the situation is this: This convent, down there in Milwaukee, needs a hundred thousand dollars. A matter of an overdue mortgage on it. The old Mother Superior is ready to retire—to a cell—and finish her days in prayer. And my wife’s got a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds—and I mean cash sales value, Givney, on the present market. Not their value as bought. And she’s just so damned near to quitting me—and tossing that bunch of diamonds into that convent—that two adjoining eyelashes on a mosquito’s brow couldn’t be closer.”

  I waited, wondering if he could get it all through his head.

  “We-e-ell,” he commented, after apparently digesting each fact separately, “I—I seem to begin now—to catch it. For one thing, I take it that you know def’nit’ly she don’t keep those sparklers in any safety box. Yes, no?”

  “Right,” I told him. “Her father once got blackmailed—by facts in letters in a downtown safety box—by an attendant who actually had an ‘in’ to the box. And she wouldn’t trust a safety box today, Givney, for the deposit of an eighth carat ring.”

  “I see,” he nodded. “And so they’re in that safe over there. Well, it’s your library—your safe. Whyn’t you open it—and take ’em out?”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why. Givney, the whole idea of my being here in Minneapolis tonight—in my own home here—never even came to me until long, long after I got to Frisco. I’ve always been known, you know, as Square-Shooter King. And it took nothing less than the strangest coincidence of my life to place me in the peculiar position of a man who will have to steal back something that he morally owns.”

  “What was the coincidessence?”

  “Well, I was broke there—in Frisco,” I went on, “wondering how the devil I would tell Laur—my wife, that is—the sad news, when I got the letter from her warning me of what she would do if the Lord ever sent the sign. And believe me!—I shut up tight then. I was in a precarious position. I didn’t even dare write to her for a ten-dollar bill. I was living in a cheap hotel—the cheapest of the cheap—though because of its name it sounded, to her, like a million-dollar hostelry. I was eating in cheap feed joints—on Market Street. I was down, Givney, believe it or not—to my last five dollars. And wishing—oh, how I wished!—that I even had back the precious $12 I’d risked, a couple of nights before, on an after-midnight transatlantic telephone call to—well—I’ll call him ‘Horses.’”

  “‘Horses’? Who—who was ‘Horses’? And where—was ‘Hor­ses’?”

  “‘Horses,’” I explained, “is a pseudonym which I personally once plastered on a certain man. And under which name I always think of him! He was, amongst various things, an expert odds-figurer—on the tracks. And, as you can gather, once worked for me. A Britisher, incidentally. And now living in London. I’d done him several favors—back when I was in the money. Which, at the time, he’d tried hard—very hard—to repay. But I was in the money—and didn’t need his repayment. And so one night there in Frisco—when my money was dwindling like hell—I gambled $12 on a 3 minute ‘after-midnight’ long-distance phone call—yes to London—to the place where I’d last known ‘Horses’ lived. And he was still there. Still a bachelor too, incidentally. And I asked him whether he could possibly cable me 20 pounds across. Well, ‘Horses’ told me enough about himself so that I saw in a jiffy he was broke. In fact, he was desperately broke—said he would sell his own soul for a thousand dollars—or even climb up and paint Old Ben a bright scarlet! That being, Givney, the famous clock on the House of Parliament. A thousand dollars ‘Horses’ wanted desperately—to pay off a £190 debt of honor there. And, with the remaining £10, dive back to America—on a freighter which was leaving the Thames—” I figured mentally forward from the day I’d talked to ‘Horses’ to the day ‘Horses’ had quoted. “Well, ’twould be leaving the Thames around 6 o’clock tomorrow morning—Minneapolis time—to be exact. And—

  “But this,” I broke off, “isn’t the story of ‘Horses.’ It’s the story of me—down at last to my last five dollars.

  “And that day—but this, what I’m about to relate, isn’t the coincidence, Givney, any more than the fact that all race horses in every race always have the same birthday—I—”

  “Just—a—minute!” he bit out. “If—if that wouldn’t be a coincidessence, then I don’t want to hear yourn. For—”

  “You poor egg!” I said, but my tones were friendly. “The birthday of all race horses, bar none, is officially January 1st. No matter when he is actually foaled, a horse’s birthday is New Year’s Day. And every January first, his age advances one more year. Now may I go on—or shall we hold a track school here?”

  His mouth had fallen ludicrously open at my information, and he pulled it hastily shut again.

  “I get you,” was all he said—and humbly.

  “All right. Well, as I started to say, this—what I’m about to relate—isn’t the coincidence that I had reference to a while back—it’s just an example of plain downright horseman’s astuteness—my own—well that day that I was down to my last five dollars, I saw a lineup of horses on the new track just out of Mexico City that looked to me to hold a sure killing—for a parlay. I’d wandered into a big book that was running wide open on Market Street—with two cappers shilling on the sidewalk—to sort of catch the smell of the old blackboard, as it were. And there, amongst the nags chalked up, was one As-You-Like-It Vth, which I happened to know almost certainly was the direct lineal descendant of As-You-Like-It Ist, on which I rode my first successful race as a jock, so long ago, Givney, that it—it would make you dizzy trying to contemplate it. And as we’re not talking ages here tonight—we’ll stick to horses. Yes. Well, I noted they were offering him as though he were a cheap selling plater—whereas I knew damned well that he had fast blood in him. Which made me study their layout more carefully. That is, for the Xochimilco track where he was booked. And the more I studied the lineup for that track, the more it looked to me like the chance of a lifetime. With nothing less than box-car figures on one nag that I, as a booker, would have given only odds or less on—and the prices on two other nags, one of whom was As-You-Like-It Vth, being offered as though they were rank outsiders. And—but again I see you don’t quite get me, now that I’m down to talking track stuff. Box-car figures, Givney, is a track term that means long odds—what you might call a long shot, see? While ‘outsiders’ are nags that have no chance in a race. And so, as I say, it looked to me like the chance of a lifetime. With those Frisco bookies gone apparently screwy on their odds-chalking. You see, Givney, we bookies—when off the track, and in real focus with things—can often see the hole in a lineup of nags—or a chalk-up of odds—where absolutely nobody else can. And the more I studied those nags—and their odds—and the whole layout for the Xochimilco oval—the more I saw that I was clean plumb crazy not to play a certain parlay that, at least on this particular book, would pay exactly 100 to 1—whereas its payoff odds shouldn’t be any more than 25 to 1. Or maybe even 15 to 1. Well, five dollars wasn’t worth anything to me, and two dollars of it was worth minus zero—if only we could get Einstein in here to figure out how much that is. And I might as well, I figured, shoot virtually half my wad—or minus zero!—to get plus very-much something. And so, Givney, I played the parlay for two smackers—and it consisted of New Deal, Who-Was-Greta-Garbo, and As-You-Like-It Vth.

  “As I came out of the handbook office, after laying my deuce-spot, I was accosted by a man who begged desperately for an inside tip—if I had any. Evidently I looked to him, right off the bat, as an insider. Which, Christ knows, I was! And at that second, Givney, is where the coincidence I spoke of lay. The matter, you see, of who the fellow was. But at the time, I didn’t know. He was just a smooth-shaven fellow—eyes sick with trouble and worry—about 55 years of age. And so I took him off to one side. And pumped him a bit as to who he was—and why he wanted a stranger’s tip. Well, the fellow told me his story. Bitte
rly. He was dying of inoperable cancer. Discovered recently, by accident, through a routine medical examination, somewhere in the Midwest. And trying now to get to Australia—to a sister whose husband had a small private hospital, and would ease him up—with dope—during his final months. He’d come on to Frisco, immediately he had learned of the disease he had, with practically no money—figuring to go to Australia with a Captain—a friend—whose vessel, then in port, would be leaving for Australia shortly. But this captain, it seems, had gotten a sudden cargo—and had loped off for some port in South America. And so the fellow was left high and dry. Was down to one dollar, Givney. Well, I told him the parlay to play in that book—for I saw that his dollar was worth no more to him than my five was to me. And I gave him the hotel and room number where I was living, thinking to see him again maybe—win or lose.

  “And that afternoon, Givney, the parlay came through. The world heard once more of its forgotten Garbo—thanks to the way that Who-Was-Greta-Garbo galloped in in the third at Xochimilco. And the other two horses, likewise, sailed in, clear winners, in the fourth and fifth. And—but here—here’s the sweetest clipping I ever chopped out of a newspaper—the Frisco Evening Eye, of October 16th—but no different, however, than what must have appeared here, in Minneapolis, at the same hour in the Minneapolis Telegram.” And groping with my two fingers in my vest pocket where I’d put that truly sweet clipping—keeping it for luck of a sort, if and maybe!—I drew it out. It read just:

  AT XOCHIMILCO

  1 2.25 Miss Dolly4.25 President Almedo5.50 Little Mex

  2 3.00 Bowery Boy 8.00 10-Story-Book1.50 Tehuantepec

  3 1.00 New Deal7.75 My Lord o’ London6.50 Bottlecap

  4 3.50 Who-Was-1.25 Fille de Paris7.75 Two Brooms

  Greta Garbo

  5 5.25 As-You-Like-It 4.00 Sweet Alice2.25 Viva Guadelajara

  And I slid it over the table.

  “Pay no attention,” I said, “to those figures in front of each winner; those are the last minute official odds at the track—while this screwy book I’d wandered into had laid 2 to 1 for New Deal, 5 to 1 for Who-Was-Greta-Garbo and 10 to 1 for As-You-Like-It Vth. And on which beautiful resultant 100 to 1 my $2—of my lone five—was now $200. And my total capital was $203!” He shoved the clipping back, forehead screwed helplessly up, as one who did not grasp the rapidly mounting proportion created by a geometrical progression. And so I went on: “As for this fellow I’d tipped—he showed up that night—at my room. He’d won $100, of course. Was grateful as hell. Had money now to book himself 3rd class to Australia. Wanted me to accept $10. Which I wouldn’t do.

  “After which refusal of mine,” I continued, “he said: ‘Well, my friend, I’m a dying man—as I told you today—and so I can’t ever repay you, unless, that is, you are a crook—in which case I could pay you back a hundredfold right now.’

  “That puzzled me,” I went on. “And—purely experimentally, Givney—I said ‘Well, I am on the make.’

  “‘Good!’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help but believe somehow that you were. Well, my friend—you were damned good to me today—and I’m gonna pay you back—if you have the coin to get to Minneapolis, Minnesota.’

  “And,” I said to the man across from me, “who do you suppose that man turned out to be?”

  “I give up,” said the man across from me. “Who did he turn out to be?”

  “He turned out to be,” I told him, “no other than a chap named Alonzo Hetchel—who, bearded at the time, had worked several weeks for my wife, as gardener, right here at this house. And, Givney, with the facts he—ye servant!—gave me—ye master!—I was in a position which, as Mortimer King, I’d probably never be able to be in again. Namely, a position in which I could rob my own house of my own diamonds—and nobody, not even my own wife, could ever know it!”

  CHAPTER XXII

  Concerning Two Letters

  “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” I went on. “For I’d been gone from Minneapolis here for practically two long months. My wife had written me, yes, of a man she had hired to do gardening around this place—a sort of morose, silent, bearded man, she said—and who had departed her service more or less suddenly. But she hadn’t mentioned his name—much less the fact that he had lobeless ears—and why should she have mentioned either, since he was just a servant, and a short-lived one at that?—and here he was—Alonzo Hetchel, the very man she’d hired—except that he was clean-shaven at last—talking to me about her—and about Otto, and Rozalda, my servants—and telling me all about myself being in some sanitarium in the South. All the scandals—and below-stairs gossip—including even certain information about a new bookie association that is being formed here, and how he opined that I’d gotten out to avoid a ‘pineapple.’ He even told me, quite unsuspiciously, later on in his conversation, such things about myself as that I was known in Minneapolis as ‘Camera-Shy’ King, for the reason that I’d never had any pictures taken of myself since I was in diapers—and lucky it was, Givney, that I rightfully deserved the name—and that I’d never had my portrait painted, either!—for this fellow had never taken occasion to inquire particularly what Mrs. King’s husband looked like—and thus didn’t even dream he was talking to ‘Camera-Shy’ King himself! And—but getting back to all he told me, it was the below-stairs gossip, Givney, that really made it possible for me to come here tonight—sub rosa as I have.

  “His story, in general, was to the effect that, up to some time back before our meeting, he’d worked three weeks in Minneapolis for a woman married to a racetrack bookie off somewhere in a sanitarium. And, he said, she had a ‘slew of diamonds.’ He didn’t know the values, no—but I, Givney, did! And she kept them, he told me, when not wearing them, in a small old-fashioned cast-iron safe imbedded in the wall—no, Givney, not that safe over there behind you at all—no!—and that’s the complication! It was my own former safe, which I’d given Laurel for her own use, that he had reference to, and which was in that wall when he left here. At any rate, this chap Hetchel knew, from the servant talk, about how Laurel went once a year to that convent in Milwaukee, and became a provisional nun. And all that. And that nobody therefore, she or I, would be on the premises here on those nights—nobody, that is, but the two servants who, he said, had strict orders never to leave the premises at the same time.

  “And it was the inside info, Givney, that he gave me about my Otto—and my Rozalda—that made possible what I hoped to do here tonight. That—and the fact that this fellow possessed a key to my front door which nobody knew he could possibly have. Yes. For my wife—in the first letter I got from her in the West—spoke of having had a new intricate lock put on our front door instead of the old one. So, naturally, I had no key to that lock. But this fellow Hetchel in Frisco there did. For it seems he’d found Otto’s key one day—and had quietly filed himself up a duplicate, so that he could step out of the house a few minutes at such times as he was left here in charge—and get safely back in again. And he had put Otto’s key right back where he found it.”

  “Then nobody,” put in the man across from me, “in the world—even your wiff—knew that there was a key there in Frisco?”

  “Exactly, Givney. Much less in my possession. And—but about my Otto. Well, Hetchel told me that Otto had confided in him that he had a German sweetheart in Stillwater, 35 miles northeast of us here; a sweetheart named Gretchen—and married to some tradesman there. And that Otto—Herr Otto Schaartze!—used to sneak up there and meet her, here and there on the outskirts. And, Hetchel said, my Rozalda had a Polish lover in Dayton, 40 miles or so to our northwest: a lover named Tomacek. And likewise married—as in the case of Otto’s sweetie. And Rozalda, Hetchel said, used to meet this lover surreptitiously—sometimes up there in Dayton—and sometimes down here in Minneapolis. Both lovers, moreover, it seems, used to write to Otto and Rozalda—but were very careful to use typewriters—the girl Gretchen always u
sing, for some reason, the red side of the ribbon on her husband’s machine, and the man typing his in ordinary black. Otto and Rozalda, of course, guarded these people’s names and identities absolutely—as well as their where­abouts in their respective towns—but Hetchel happened to have a page from a letter of each one, fished out of my furnace firebox before the daily trash was ignited, on which, poor devil, he’d made some calculations on the probable progress of his cancer—at the rate of a daily doubling of the cells—and his possible progress over the Pacific Ocean. Which two sheets he now gave me. And so there, Givney—in that info—and those fragments of papers—lay the absolutely sure method—rather two sure methods—of getting Otto and Rozalda out of this house on one of the nights that Laurel, too, would be out and far away—and the diamonds in the house. And, so Hetchel informed me wearily, all that I would need to do, after working a certain specific game on Otto and Rozalda to get them out, would be to walk in—knock the knob off that old cast-iron safe, with a sledge that Otto kept downstairs in the tool box—and be in the safe. For all the old safes, he told me, were strictly ‘knob-knocking jobs’: that is, he said, you could knock the knob off with a sledge, and through the large hole left when the combination dials fell off, operate with your fingers the bolt or bolts that held the door. And, said he furthermore, if I was interested in doing all that—I’d have a fortune. Which was all he could give me, he said, for my lucky tip that had made it possible for him to get home to Australia. Of course I asked him for his Australian address—telling him sort of half jokingly that if and when I made that ‘cleanup’—if, that is, I should ever tackle it!—I would send him a ‘commission.’ But he only grimaced and said we were quits—and that he didn’t have long enough to live to make a ‘commission’ worth the having.

  “But, Givney, I didn’t come over to the plan right away. No. For this fellow, cancer or no cancer, was a possible source of blackmail. Or, in case he later talked to Frisco or Sydney police, could be the cause of my being possibly arrested on, say, some strange damn technicality that if I had robbed my wife I had committed grand larceny. I didn’t know. But two days after he sailed for Sydney, on a small liner called The Southern Cross, I read—in a Frisco paper there—that he had committed suic—however, Givney—here—read the item yourself, just as I cut it out from the Frisco newspaper. And which is probably identical—to the last punctuation mark—with some story of like head and dateline appearing in the morning papers here the same day—since it had a direct Minneapolis tie-up.” And I quietly handed to him that little item I had cut from the Frisco Blade the third morning after I’d said good-by to that poor devil who had talked so freely with me, unknowing of who I was.