X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Since the scandal item in question stated that Mr. “M. Bernard Lincoln” had come to Paris in early January (of 1841) “girded, like a foreign diplomat, with a passport” etc.—and since the American passport records of the third and last quarters of 1840 happen to be extant today, because of certain incidents of high international importance taking place then, it was not difficult to look up President Abraham Lincoln’s namesake!

  And to find that there was, in reality, no “M, Bernard Lincoln” at all—but a Meyer Bernard Li who took out a passport in the summer of that year for France. And he was set down, in the faded application, as an American citizen, born in Baltimore on May 31, 1808 Father, Li Sung Chew, “student of medicine from Fatshan, Cathay”; mother: “Rebecca Li, née Rotskoff, Polish Jewess, of Baltimore.”

  I should have been, of course, amazed to think that André Marceau might—or conceivably did—hold within him 1/8 Chinese blood and 1/8 Jewish blood—but unfortunately, a photo I had of the human cause of the scandal did not at all look ½ Chinese! He looked Jewish to be sure—even Polish-Jewish, if one took into consideration the peculiar tip of his nose—he looked to me, even, a bit Italian—but decidedly not Chinese!

  However, the invaluable passport records show that this Meyer Bernard Li obtained a vise of his passport in September, 1841, for China, object “to sojourn at native health institution at Singchau, outside Canton.”

  Kenyon’s Commercial Guide of the World indicates that, at Singchau, China—which is virtually nothing but a village—there is but one commercial institution, though that has been in existence, Kenyon’s Guide says, for 100 years. It is known today as the Kwantung reptile Hatchery, and it breeds reptiles and ships both them and their venom today all over the Orient. It develops moccasin snake venom for the treatment both of hemophilia and thrombocytopenic purpura: venom for the pain of cancer; in fact, venom of a dozen other kinds in use today medically. Inasmuch as venom—particularly that of the rattlesnake—has for 40 years had a limited use in epilepsy, in that it increases the coagulability of the blood, and Marceau was an epileptic—and Meyer Bernard Li was presumably the introducer of the strain—it looked indeed as though I was on the track. So, knowing that Chinese business institutions preserve religiously all records that portray in any way the development of the institution, I wrote—via Orient airmail—to the director of the Kwantung Reptile Hatchery, one Doctor L. L. Soo, asking him specifically to quite ignore my query in case no records were available whatsoever of one Meyer B. Li, who visited that place nearly a hundred years ago; but to reply to me by airmail if by some chance there was a single thing available.

  And exactly thus I stood, throughout late February, knowing that should I ever find in my mailbox a letter from far-off Canton, I had indeed closed the Marceau Case to the last gap therein.

  And the letter came! Yesterday. And I desire to introduce a portion of it—and all of its facts—as a part of this analysis. It reads as follows:

  Singchau, China.

  February 16, 1937.

  Dear Mr. Jones:

  As director of this ancient establishment I feel complimented indeed that you should be so conversant with the Chinese mind and character as to realize that the records of a Chinese business institution are preserved as inviolably as are the tablets of one’s ancestors.

  And upon the faded rice paper pages of an ancient record book here—and written in Chinese, of course—I find, indeed, that which you apparently seek. Complete information as to the visit here, as a patient, in early 1842, of one Li.

  The record is indited, I find, more or less as a case history. And by no less a person than my great-grandfather, Soo Jung, mandarin, who founded this institution. A man who truly should have been a physician, so deeply did he perceive the rationale of many medical empiricisms. For not only did he discover the partial efficacy of snake venom in epilepsy years before its use was even proclaimed in American medical circles, but he was one of the first of our race, I believe, to perceive that the “falling sickness” was, in truth, every bit as much a matter of “mating” as of pathology. Even anticipating those noteworthy discoveries enunciated in 1865 by which epilepsy was found definitely to be a recessive character in inheritance. But, of course, being Chinese, I doubt whether had any of my great-grandfather’s findings gotten across the vast ocean—particularly those concerning snake venom—they would have been put down as anything but native superstitions coming out of far Cathay! However, antedating even some of Mendel’s theories as he did, he always endeavored, at least, to enter in his record whatever was available concerning the patient’s “mating history.”

  So—about Li!

  It is set down here that he was a pure Caucasian, and not a Chinese. But that he spoke a fair—or broken—Chinese. And that he was, of course, a victim of the “falling sickness.” That he had come here, clear around the Horn, and in a sailing vessel, because a Chinese father—that is, a man merely married to his mother—and the one, incidentally, who had taught him what Chinese he knew—had told him when he was but 16 years of age that here, in this village near Canton, definite results had been accomplished in the “falling sickness” with snake venom.

  It is also set down here that he was an orphan. And without brothers or sisters. That he had been enabled to come here, just as he had been able to go to Paris in the year gone, by virtue of a small cash bequest left him by his mother, most of which was now gone.

  The record shows that this Li improved a bit here in the frequency—that is, of course, the lessened frequency—of his “falls,” but, in the latter part of the same year in which he came, died of—as I interpret the symptoms—pneumonia.

  Pasted to his “case history”—as I shall call it!—are two sheets of paper written, as at least I can see—even though I cannot translate it—in Yiddish. A notation in Chinese beneath them says that they were retained from the “afflicted one’s” few possessions when he was buried here, because they contained—at least according to chance words which “fluttered like young swallows from the nest of his mouth,” information as to his “mating history.” These I am enclosing herewith, in case by any chance they will further amplify the data you are endeavoring to garner about Li. (end of excerpt from Soo’s letter)

  And here I can do no better than to abstract very briefly the information set forth in the two sheets of linen paper which Dr. Soo detached from that ancient record and enclosed for me. They are, as he said, written in Yiddish, And, though extremely faded, they constitute obviously, a single letter from Rebecca Rotskoff Li to her son. And because Li had told that old physician-mandarin Soo Jung, that they contained information concerning his heredity, the ancient Æsculapius appended them to his patient’s case history. Even though unable himself to read those Yiddish characters which were so like—in many ways—his own Chinese. Even as was Dr. L. L. Soo unable to read them! And even as was X. Jones, likewise! But fortunately that highly valuable individual, Radranath Sepoona, studied Yiddish at the University of Calcutta—and he has been able to render me a fine and clear translation. The translation showing that the letter was for delivery to Meyer Bernard Li after his mother’s death. In it she tells him quite frankly—and evidently, for the first time, completely—just how he came into existence. As a young Jewess she had been, she tells him, an extremely beautiful girl. And had been taken to Paris, in the year 1807, by her father, Meyer Rotskoff—a Baltimore rabbi—on a business mission of his. Which was to search for some trace of his only living relative—a brother Bernard—who had been in Paris at the time of the excitement of the storming of the Bastille, and had never been heard of since. Being a Jew, her father had had to get authorization from the highest officials then in Paris, to search old records. But he had died. She had completed his work—at least to the extent of finding that the brother was indeed dead—and that she, therefore, was all alone in the world. But a well-to-do Italian who happened to be residing in Paris—rather, to be exact, a man wholly of Italian blood but upon whom F
rench citizenship had descended by virtue of some alteration which had occurred in the territories and boundary lines of France and Italy respectively—and whom she had chanced to meet through having been with her father once during the obtaining of those difficult authorizations, had fallen deeply in love with her. And had frankly pleaded with her that she be his mistress. For he was already married. Being a Jewess, to whom virtue meant almost more than anything in the world, she had refused, she tells her son, the Italian’s request for a liaison. But, being young and extremely inexperienced-well—one fine morning, alas, she awoke—after a deep drugged sleep following the drinking of a demi-tasse of coffee, prepared for her by the Italian, in some private quarters he owned and where she had consented naïvely to have déjeuner with him—only to find herself, with him, in a high canopied bed, her virginity lost! (The drug put in the coffee was opium, as she ascertained long after from her legal Chinese husband, to whom she described the exact symptoms, taste and smell.) And less than one week later she knew that, as a result of that night, she was going ultimately to have a child! Being a Jewess—and being also, incidentally, practically without funds—and also for the sake of that child—she accepted then the inevitable: which took the form of a splendid—though secluded—apartment, provided for her by the Italian, on the rue Chausseé d’Antin. But, with his mercurial Italian temperament, he had tired of her within exactly one month. She had not even told him yet about the coming child—indeed, since he was married, it would have been of no utility to have done so yet. And now that he was manifestly tiring of her, she feared to tell him—lest, with certain power and influence he possessed in Paris, she would some night be murdered in her bed—by apparent housebreakers—to still any possible scandal. So she humbly took a cash settlement which he offered her to get out of Paris—some 5,000 paltry francs of that day—and went back to Baltimore. On a fast sailing vessel called, quaintly, “The Wandering Jewess.” There in Baltimore she immediately married a “Cathayan” who truly loved her—and who had loved her even before, as a younger girl, she had left for Paris. Telling him, of course, all that had occurred in Paris. And when the child by that unfortunate Paris seduction—in fact, to use hard but accurate language, that Paris rape!—arrived, though she had to give him Li as his legal last name, she named his first names after, respectively, her father and his brother. She renders to her son in that letter a considerable number of details concerning his real father, who never, it seems, got to America: details such as his birth-date, and death-date. For, according to facts definitely in her possession, he had died 13 years prior to her. Even as had his wife, the existence of whom had made Rebecca Rotskoff loath—in fact, afraid—to announce to him that she held within her his child. She tells her son, also sadly, that during that month following her ravishment—the month in which she lived helplessly on the Chaussée d’Antin and, of course, saw a great deal of this Italian—she had found that he had spells indicative of nothing less than the “falling sickness,” and that that, alas, is undoubtedly the source of Meyer Bernard’s momentary periods of unconsciousness. To which she adds a quaint observation which is all we have to go by to deduce her own physical appearance: for she tells her son that since his real father was short, he—Meyer Bernard—inherits his unusual tallness entirely and exclusively from her. (I am indebted to Dr. Soo, and not the American passport records, for the height of Meyer Bernard Li expressed in English feet and inches.)

  And now getting to the end of Dr. Soo’s letter, he writes:

  I trust that both the foregoing facts and the enclosure will be of some utility to you. And am happy to be able to send all to you. Though I am forced, however, to dispatch my missive in the hands of a special messenger, to Canton, 30 miles away, in order that it may make the airmail to Britain. My messenger is, unfortunately, a half-wit—an employee who helps to give forcible feeding to the reptiles here on the farm—and so I shall encase my letter and enclosures, all properly addressed to you in England, in a larger envelope carrying your name and address in phonetic Chinese so that, in case this poor fellow is stopped by certain native bullies on the road, they will, on seeing that he has only a legitimate letter destined for transmission to a man in London, leave him and it be. And I trust that the letter will safely get through without any trouble.

  Most cordially,

  L. L. Soo, M.D.

  And Dr. Soo’s messenger not only, as it seems, got through successfully—but even dispatched the letter without removing its utilitarian protective casing—for what I received had to be phonetically deciphered by the London postoffice! But anyway, I got it.

  And thanks to the fact that each branch once of the I.C.D.S. has one employee who is by trade a commercial artist, and is stationed, moreover, on the same floor with a photo-engraver and a printer, in case special cuts are required in a hurry for reports, I shall be able to send instructions in this analysis as to how to modify a certain tear-out of the Marceau family tree—a print of which each office has—so that the tree may be shown in this report as modified by the existence of Meyer B. Li.

  In short, to create and present a section of the tree showing the matings, rather than the marryings—for there are actually more illicit unions in that section than legal ones! And, by certain conventional symbols, show the trail of the taint through the family Marceau.

  But before cabling specific instructions about that, we had better wait—till at least the next interim between cable “takes”! For it might be that all we would send now would be modified later by something else: in other words, we may yet be able to decipher what André Marceau tried to convey in his short-story manuscript “Strange Romance.”

  18In the absence of Grimes’ very specific figures given us last night, we have to—if we consider ourselves still back in last November, where I once was—reach this numeral “2” (our hypothesis as to the number of days’ deprivation of the drug) by superimposing three sets of figures, obtained over a study of long-time records, one upon the other (a): Marceau’s general average rate of consumption of Yttran, evidently 15 grains per diem, (b) Tomkins’ rate of re-ordering, i.e., 105 grains per week, and (c) the time-schedule of the regular Woborn and Westwill shipments, illuminated further by an occasional Tomkins order marked “Rush—supply out—needed immediately.” And superimposing these sets of figures one upon the other invariably leaves us with a gap of approximately 48 to 72 hours in which there was no Yttran at Little Ivington. As for the explanation of this, we have to—if we again consider ourselves as reasoning matters out last November, and not today!—presume, as I then did, that Tomkins himself had overlooked ordering the Yttran, and that he it was who made up a few temporary placebos of sugar-of-milk powders. One thing is rather certain: Marceau was deprived of the drug, and unknown to himself!

  19Acid burns are very deceptive; they hurt very little when the acid first touches the skin and for some time after.

  20No wonder, as set forth in a footnote numbered in sent a short while back between cable “takes” that the sight of bright green invariably brought to Marceau’s mind that terrible seizure he had had in Jarvis-Winstanley’s office, and—at least in a separate instances, viz, the receipt of the green envelopes in the mail—titillated his energies in the direction of setting down, in code, a few facts about his possible death.

  21“May 5, 1935. If ever I am found dead under mysterious circumstances, here, in this purely fictitious story from my pen, lies concealed the undoubted explanation of exactly how my mysterious death was brought about; the mechanics, as it were, of my dispatchal. André Marceau.”

  These are the significant words which André Marceau, according to Jane’s transcription of them—wrote upon the top of the longer of the two manuscripts which he “transmogrified,” i.e., “Strange Romance”—the one of the pair which he “composed” first!

  I, of course, never got to read it; but, Jane tells me in her letter of today, there is a diagram—or picture—at one point in it illustrating a feature of the story wh
ich was, even to her, literally “dragged” into its plot. If its irrelevancy to the plot was apparent to her, then doubtlessly it would possess that identical status with any reader. And fortunately, as I said in a preceding footnote, she made a careful tracing in ink of the diagram before letting the script go out of her hands—and that tracing is, of course, one of the two vital enclosures sent me today. And from the firm and sure penwork Jane has done on it, I would say that, were she inclined to develop her talents, she could do more than the mere tracing of drawings; that she could evolve into a skillful commercial artist.

  But as to the drawing itself, which, coming into this analysis at virtually the last minute, cannot be made a part—at least a pictorial part—of the report which this analysis will constitute. The diagram consists simply of three Tarot cards, laid out fanwise—no less, in fact, than Le Pendu, Le Bateleur, and La Lune—though not depicted exactly as in the true Tarot deck, but in a fantastic modification thereof. In line, that is, with the story itself, which, from what little Jane tells me of it, was a decidedly fantastic tale.