The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  A look of repugnance, almost loathing, crossed the man’s face.

  “Your kind,” he said cuttingly, unsparingly, “wind up eventually in a place where the mechanical piano plays all night — and the ladies wear their skirts short — and scant.” He laughed harshly. “All right, little deep waters, the loan of a key is the easiest thing I can grant you.” He bowed. “And will my little lady of the streets now say when we shall depart?”

  “Be charitable,” she begged proudly, her face waxy in its loss of colour. “And — and — you may call a taxicab now.”

  He bowed with deepest irony, and turned from the room. At length he returned with his bowler hat. “The taxi will be here in five minutes,” he said coldly. “We’ll step downstairs and wait for it.”

  He stood frigidly aside, and allowed her to precede him out of the door, and down the steps. And there they stood in silence for several moments. Up Burton Place, which ran at right angles to Astor Street, on the side of a great six-storey flat building about a half-block distant, painters were hoisting a scaffold, and on another scaffold nearby, already in position, two men were busily engaged in filling in with colour the huge letters of an advertisement comprised of white letters on a black background. She pointed to it as they waited. “I — I see your father’s company is going to touch up his advertisement with some colours?”

  “Yes,” he said coolly. And then the frigidity in his voice became dissipated a bit by the vehemence in his ensuing remarks. “He appropriated a cold hundred thousand for that crazy ad. to some sign-painting company headed by an old fool that befriended him in his early days. Not only that, but he appropriated another ten thousand to a firm of commercial inspection people to see that the work was carried out according to his mad specifications. I even understand that he bought that flat building up the street there because the owner wouldn’t rent that windowless side of it to him for his beastly poster stuff.”

  A passing yellow taxicab spun suddenly, sharply up at the side kerb. His voice grew hard again. “Well, there’s our machine. Where do you want to go first? Fortescue’s flat, I suppose, where the keyboard is?”

  “Yes — the keyboard first,” she said quietly.

  “The Eastwood Arms,” he told the driver. “Eastwood and Sheridan Road.”

  They both got in, and the ride continued in rigid silence except for a muttered statement emanating from him as they drew into Rogers Park. “I don’t know but what I ought to call this whole thing off,” he growled. “I could forgive you for your blackmailing of me, but I can’t forgive the way you pretended all the while to be a decent, innocent little girl. I’ll be glad to see the last of you. There’s plenty of your kind to be picked up any night on Madison Street.”

  To which thrust she maintained a dignified silence. And a moment later the cab drew up at the Eastwood Arms. In silence they went upstairs together, and Fortescue’s man came to the door. The younger man spoke. “Hello, Biggs. Just me. And a lady friend of mine. I want to run into Fortescue’s study — the keys, you know.”

  “Go right in, sir. Make yourself at home, Mr. Middleton. Mr. Fortescue left instructions always to let you in, sir.”

  He led the way into that seldom used half-office, half-study of Fortescue’s. A great varnished wooden panel was affixed to one of the walls. He pointed to it. At least three hundred keys hung systematically arranged on bright brass screw hooks, each with a handprinted tag affixed to it. It was plain that they were all in alphabetical order.

  “Well, look ‘em over and let’s go,” he said sullenly. “That completes the first part of our bargain. Pick one convenient for your gentleman friend, but be sure it says ‘vacant’ on it. Be a little embarrassing, don’t you know, otherwise.”

  “Then — then I may have the pleasure of a private selection — ” she said timidly.

  “By all means,” He bowed deeply, and repaired to the outer hallway where he stood with back to the door in dignified silence.

  As for her, she cast one glance through the open door, perceiving that she was quite alone. Then she ran hastily along the hundreds of keys until she came to the ones beginning with “L” and there she removed one which read: “Lake Park Avenue, No. 4220 (Vacant lot) (gate).” Making sure that there were no more keys bearing that street name on their tags, she untied tag from key with a few deft jerks of the string, and the tiny metal prize she dropped hurriedly into her bosom. A quick glance toward the outer door showed her escort still standing in profound hauteur in the hallway of the apartment, from which she abstracted from a still different part of the keyboard a key identical in shape to the one she had just obtained. From it she jerked off its tag and tossed that appendage crumpled up on the floor, but to the second key she affixed the Lake Park Avenue label she had removed from the first key. Then, with a little smile, she hung it back in the gap she had originally made. And a second later she had rejoined her companion of the morning. “And now,” she said, “we might proceed to the safety box. It’s in the Chicago State Bank.”

  It was thirty minutes later when they drew up at the ground floor bank on the corner of Monroe and La Salle. He accompanied her downstairs to the vault room, and after identifying herself she passed him in with her. Unlocking a tiny lockbox with the key given her at the desk, she then beckoned him inside one of the curtained booths provided customers for the inspection of their valuables. He came in hastily. “And now,” she said, in a low voice, “here is my share of our trade. I would suggest that you don’t try any radical measures, for there is a guard at the gate twenty feet away. And you know, really, you couldn’t get out of here unless I gave the word.”

  He inspected sulkily the two lone letters which lay in the box. Both envelopes had been opened, and he examined the contents of each carefully. Then he took from his pocket the plethoric roll he had, and held it out to her.

  “It’s shrunk a bit,” he informed her. “That taxi you know. It’s only nine hundred and forty-three dollars now.”

  “Say no more,” she said cheerfully, accepting the roll and tucking it down into her velvet handbag. “All expenses are on me. And I shall see that you arrive home — Jerome.”

  “Mr. Middleton, please,” he corrected her stiffly.

  Replacing her now empty box, she conducted him out of the shiny barred gate that marked the barrier to and from the safety deposit room. But upstairs, on the first floor, she turned with disconcerting suddenness to a grated window bearing the placard “Receiving Teller” and he heard her say six words which ended definitely certain plans that were crystallising rapidly in his brain.

  “Please deposit this to my account,” were the six words.

  To the outside kerb they went. A line of taxis stood waiting. He turned to her.

  “Well, I think that you may as well be on your way and I’ll be on mine,” he said. “I would like to borrow a five if you have it — for my taxi. I’ve got to run up to see Fortescue’s man about something. You — you’ve cleaned me out, that’s what you have.”

  She embarrassedly tendered him a five-dollar bill on the open street. And he knew, in his inner self, as he openly took it, that he had heaped upon her head by this unrefusable request one last public indignity, for more than one passer-by stared at the pretty girl who was seemingly compelled to hand her escort money.

  His face was a study in chagrin as the cab rolled along toward Fortescue’s apartment, and digging down into his breast pocket he made to himself one significant remark. “The man who said all letters should be posted in the fireplace was right. Some of these epistles are going to be burned as soon as I get out of this cab. That’s certain.”

  He selected his left coat pocket as the receptacle of that material which was to go up in flames. And to it he transferred immediately the letter he had just secured — the one which had never seen the interior of a mailbox. He followed it with the letter of his own that had been posted. Then his fingers explored an envelope from which they drew forth several sheets of paper bearing
single-spaced typewriting, and the last of which bore the single signature made on the machine, of “Fortescue.” He fell to reading the second page and appeared to be intrigued by the contents, now many, many days old. The letter — from the second page onward — ran:

  “…. writing you these things because I am unexpectedly called out of town for a few days. To fully and conclusively brand him as a paranoiac it is highly advisable to make him the victim of some sort of egoistically grandiose or persecutory hallucination that will seem extremely real to him. But while I can’t make him the victim of an hallucination, I can make him the victim of an illusion, and that very easily. For I was, when a young man, stage assistant for many years to the Great Dommer, a Chicago magician who gave high-class acts around clubs and lodges.

  “My idea is to plant him in some old house in which the back is dark and gloomy. In fact, I have in mind a house on Kinzie Street, part of his father’s estate, with brick walls all about it. We will secure three sheets of plate glass, each somewhat larger than a window. Each of two sheets will hang out over the window of the rear room in which he is to change his clothing, and the window directly above it, something like glass awnings or canopies. The upper and inside edge of each sheet will rest against cleats nailed to the wooden side of the house, and the lower and outside edge in each case will be held by a rope and hook arrangement, also suspended from above like a guy rope, supporting the weight and keeping the sheet of plate glass at an angle of forty-five degrees with the house. On the brick wall directly opposite his window we will affix in cleats, upright, the third sheet of plate glass. Our stage mechanism will then be completed by a row of small automobile lights, each with a reflector, studded around the inside of the upstairs window, connected to a pair of storage batteries through a switch. As soon as I see through a peephole that he has completed his change of costume, I will shut off the entire flow of gas. The dying down of the light reflecting out of his window will be a signal to you to snap on your circuit upstairs. You will then act out a little drama I have in mind which the moment he mentions it after he has been arrested at the church, as he surely will be, means the Psycopathic Detention Station for him sure. For he will see that drama from the moment his light goes out and yours goes on — he will be transfixed by the sight of a brilliantly lighted window apparently fifteen feet or so from him, and directly opposite his window. And what he sees will be in reality what you do upstairs, reflecting forth horizontally to the inside surface of the plate glass hanging down over your window, thence vertically downward — according to the laws of reflection concerning 45 degree plane reflecting surfaces — to the top surface of the glass canopy of his window, thence horizontally again over to the vertical sheet of glass affixed to the opposite wall, where it will form a brilliant moving image constituting a perfect illusion, appearing to be as far from him only as the entire length of travel of the light rays. To make sure that he does not lean out of his window and consequently become aware of the deception by bumping his head or his hand on the invisible sheet of plate glass over it, we will nail his window tight.

  “Now if you will, while I am gone, casually pick up somewhere a black masquerade robe, an old man’s white beard, a bald-pated wig, a wooden bowling ball and a can of black paint, all we will need in the way of further properties will be the end of a table sawn off, one chair and some placards. I will elucidate further on my return.

  “The moment he is out of there, we will pass in the glass plates, remove the cleats, break the plates with a blow of a hammer on each and dump the pieces into an old air shaft which is in that Kinzie Street house, tossing down a barrel of sawdust on top of them. The rest of the stuff, together with his discarded clothing, we will jam into a suitcase, and get out the back way by stepping over to the fire-escape on the warehouse adjoining, going up, crossing the roof, and coming down in the alley on Illinois Street.

  “There is, I have thought at times, a faint possibility that after he is sent to a State Hospital, he might succeed somehow in raising a question on the matter of signatures. I will therefore contribute free-gratis some of my sleight-of hand by having him render a receipt for those spectacles, sealing it up in an envelope in front of him, placing it in a book, but while my back is turned drawing forth another envelope which you will have signed ahead of time. If ever he sends for that signature, hi? name is mud from that time on.

  “We will try to get those spectacles by hook or by crook, but in case we fail we must have a further train laid against him by picking up some ragged floater on West Madison Street, having him purchase the Inter-continental News photo of them and order a duplicate made — after which I will shoot him off to Honolulu as Hawaian representative of the Middleton Remedies. The business can foot the expense. Good idea, eh? I think …”

  But at this point the man in the cab ceased his perusal of this letter and placed it in its entirety with the others for ignition. Then he leaned back and fell to thinking.

  When he reached Fortescue’s apartment for the second time that morning, after a careful examination of the cab to make sure he had left behind him no scrap of paper, he found Fortescue’s man busy in the little hallway with a vacuum cleaner. He stepped inside the study in which he had last left the girl and gloatingly surveyed the gap in the row of keys. He spied the crumpled up tag on the floor and picking it up read its legend: “Waverley Court, No. 49 (Bungalow)” and to which had been added in red ink: “Occupant home only first week in each month.”

  “Smart little devil,” he commented sagely. Then, stepping over to the fireplace with which the room was provided, he lighted and burned all the three letters he had placed aside in his coat pocket, envelopes included, and crushed their black, illegible ashes through the iron grate. Leaving them nothing more than a black powder, he arose with a sigh and repaired back to the grunting Biggs with the vacuum cleaner.

  “I say, Biggs,” he demanded, “haven’t you any idea at all where Fortescue is? There’s some business I want to see him about. Some very urgent matters; extremely so, that’s what.”

  “Well, sir, I can give you a clue then. Mr. Fortescue can be got on a wire whose number is Kenburyport 228. And you’re supposed to ask for Mr. George Barker. Beyond that I — well — I wouldn’t care to say, sir.” And he added: “Oh — it’s Kenburyport, Indiana, too, sir.”

  “Kenburyport, Indiana? And the wire is 228? Well, now — I wonder what’s back of that? I think I’ll just get a little information, for I must see Fortescue without delay.” He stepped to the ‘phone. He called for the information operator. When he got her he asked: “Please get long distance — Kenburyport, Indiana — and ask the local operator there the name and address of the party who owns the local ‘phone No. 228. Call me back here when you get it, and charge the toll to this wire.”

  He sat on the little telephone chair and waited until the answering ring came. The information operator’s metallic words were: “Kenburyport 228 of Indiana is held by a Mrs. Herman Rothappel of 216 Harky Street.”

  “Thank you,” he said perfunctorily. He hung up. Finally he reached down an official railroad guide that hung by the side of the instrument. Consulting it a moment, he dropped it and stood up. With a nod to Biggs he went downstairs once more and again hailed a taxicab.

  “I want to go to the Chicago and East Shore Electric Lines station, wherever that is,” he told the chauffeur. “But I want to stop first at my home at 1299 Astor Street. I want to pick up a raincoat and also get some money to pay you with.” And he settled back wearily on the cushions.

  Fifteen minutes later he was entering his place of abode once more. There he donned a raincoat, and fished forth a handful of money — a ten-dollar bill, a two-dollar bill, and a mass of silver change. Then he emerged and entered his waiting machine once more. It was now close to noontime. An hour and a half later he was dismounting at the tiny town of Kenburyport. The sky was still overcast, the rain was still falling in a faint drizzle, and he was glad he had worn his raincoat and
rain hat. He did, however, strip from his face the leaden spectacles, and jamming them down in his pocket rubbed his eyes with satisfaction and relief. “Thank God, I’m out of Chicago, and Illinois,” he said cheerfully to himself. “Now I can get a rest from those things for a while.”

  On the main street of the town an old man beating off a barking dog with his cane directed him to Harky Street, which led up a hill. And it was not long before he was entering the two-storey newly-built frame building that he found at the number given him by the long distance operator in Chicago. An unusually stout woman of undoubted Teutonic origin came to the door as he knocked lightly, and he spoke.

  “I am looking for a man,” he said cautiously, “who gave this number in Chicago as to where he could be found.”

  “What is the man’s name?” she inquired patiently.

  “It was — I believe Barker. Mr. George Barker. He is a man of about forty, dresses very well, and has jet black hair which he parts in the middle.”

  “Oh, yes — yes, sir! That is the new man who came for a room this morning. He’s a labour organiser. If you will go up those steps there” — she indicated a broad flight of steps behind her — ” and knock on the third door to your right upstairs you will find him. You will find the room easy, sir. The number ‘6’ is on the door.”

  “Quite all right,” he assured her. And he commenced his climb, while she disappeared in some direction downstairs.

  A skylight was at the top, and by its light he glanced about him undecidedly as he neared the head of the stairs. A momentary glance as he continued to ascend revealed that the doors held numbers, and as he reached the top and stepped up the last step to the new level provided by the second floor, he was surprised to see the third door to his right open and no other than Fortescue come out, his right hand in his coat pocket, a strange set expression on his face.