X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  The most striking features of these particular three cards, however, is that each contains a number of objects in the same category! I, personally, do not see how that fact could escape any observer. And it was doubtlessly for that very purpose that these particular Tarot cards were selected and put into the story! For instance, in the card representing the Hanged Man, the hanged man is suspended from the same general type of crude gallows as in the original Tarot deck; i.e., from a hewed-off tree limb supported in the crotches of two upright trees with branches hewed off. With the result—at least in Marceau’s variation of this card—that there are 14 “nubbins” visible in the picture, i.e., points where the saw has passed transversely across a limb.

  The next card, taken in a clockwise direction, is that of The Juggler—and this particular juggler is juggling 6 visible balls!

  And in the next card, taken clockwise, and representing obviously a scene on same other planet—in short, no other than the Tarot card known as The Moon—there are 4 moons shining down! There are also, incidentally, two animals baying at these moons—but the two animals are definitely and incontrovertibly not in the same category; the one furtherest away by perspective appears to be a sort of wolf with curled hair on the rear part of his body only, while the foremost one appears to be some sort of a bovine with a curled horn in the middle of his forehead. Only the 4 moons, it is to be emphasized, lie in the same category.

  And what is this, indeed, but a pictorial representation of the old mind-reading—or telepathic—“stunt” in which the “performer,” or “mind-reader,” turns immediately to the proper page in a book decided upon by a group of people while he is out of the room—or on the way to the house where he is to do his feat. Or, perchance, touches a card, lying in a row of such—a card which the waiting audience is “concentrating” on. Either of which he is able to accomplish thanks to a confederate making, around and about the room, several casual and covert “groupings” of articles which lie in the same categories, and thus providing the “mind-reader” with the key! For instance: Let us say that the little audience who is to view the feat decides on page 245 of a certain book. And let us say that a maid—who, in reality, is a confederate in this instance—casually, and while dusting around and setting straight the room, places 2 hats close together, 4 pieces of bricabrac, and reduces the cigarette stubs in an unused ashtray to 5. The groupings lying, incidentally, clockwise around the room. The performer, upon entering it, and looking about, and appearing to “concentrate.” instantly announces the selected page as Page 245. Or, again, in the case of a row of cards, and an agreement between performer and confederate that the groupings shall be added, the performer adds 2 to 3 to 5, and touches the 10th card.

  At any rate, among the books in Marceau’s small private library, sold after his death—a copy of which original list I happen to have in my portfolio here—is no less than “Zantaine s Budget of Parlor Games and Mystifying Feats.” Which practically confirms to the extent of 100 per cent the theory that Marceau, in those three Tarot cards, was utilizing the “Telepathy via Categories” stunt which beyond all doubt Zantaine included in his budget. The unfortunate thing, so far as Marceau’s coding went, was that the coding in this case was connected in some wise—in two ways, as I hope to show—with his small private library—and he never foresaw the contingencies of his manuscripts being purloined after his death, and his library being dissipated without anyone suspecting that it was probably the key to a code message.

  But returning now to the code message, our “page” in Marceau’s case is hardly 14-6-4—or 1464. For even the famous novel “Anthony Adverse” does not have that many pages! And, moreover, were we directed to a single entire page, we would probably be up against some further occlusion of the facts supposed to reach us.

  It is far more likely that Marceau, whom we are now certain was familiar with the old mind-reading feat, intended the groupings to be added. Thus: 14 plus 6 plus 4.

  But the proof of any pudding is, after all, the eating thereof, and we shall have to sample our own cooking!

  14 plus 6 plus 4 adds up, of course, to 24.

  And must represent, let us hazard, something very, very specific—and not a page.

  And so, having, as I said above, here in my portfolio a list of all of the books of Marceau’s library, sold after his death, I could not help but notice, even when I started this long footnote to my general report, that he possessed one listed as “The 99 Rules.” And I happen to know a little of that book which is a very old work, published I believe in the 1860’s—and to know, also, that it contains 99 specific instances of something! In fact, ten minutes ago I sent Sepoona up the street to the American library to beg, borrow—or almost steal!—a copy of it. Indeed, here he returns—and with it in his hands. And I can now give its complete title. Which is: “THE 99 RULES―of Neuropathic and Psychopathic Heredity, as Compiled Empirically from 61,238 Case Histories,” by Kalver Haskell, M.A., M.Sc.

  Glancing over it again—for I have not seen it for years—I note that the Numbers VIII to XXXI of its 99 “Mendelian Instances” cover epileptic matings of various and sundry sorts. And so let us, for curiosity’s sake, see what Number XXIII—but not No. XXIV; at least not yet—is. No. XXIII covers Mr. Haskell’s empiric findings for the case of fathers with epilepsy from birth mating with feebleminded mothers. And what, now, is No. XXV? That is the case of epileptic mothers mating with fathers who have been alcoholics only. And now for Number XXIV. What is that one? I will transcribe it here verbatim. As follows:

  No. XXIV

  Where epilepsy occurs in the father, in nocturnal form only, and developing late in life, and the mother has a history of periodical seizures of—or tendencies to—kleptomania, any child resulting from the above type of union will have 100 per cent chance of developing epilepsy, though in all probability late in life. and, for some reason not known to me, in some rare and anomalous form with highly fatal possibilities. This type of mating, though it seems itself anomalous, is by no means so rare as it sounds; my 61,238 case-histories provide 5 authenticated instances of it, 4 with one or more progeny. And the 4 instances back up the above-detailed empiricism 100 per cent.

  So! So Case No. XXIV is the case which André Marceau plainly wished to designate as his own specific case. And we may well presume that in those days on Tavistock Square with his father, Théophile Marceau, he saw undoubted evidences in the old man, in the latter’s later years, of nocturnal epilepsy. And we may equally well presume that, in André’s early days when his mother was still alive, he and his father saw her, during certain periods of her life, coming home from department stores with stolen articles—perhaps even purloining articles belonging to father and son—or the neighbors. Carefully hidden, indeed, has been this little family skeleton, and we dig it out now only in Case No. XXIV! And that the purely empiric findings of Kalver Haskell, who is not, it will be noted, a physician, are logical, is due simply to the fact that periodical kleptomania is but one definite form of periodical insanity; while—and I will for the sake of the record name here one definite authority, i.e., E. C. Spitzka, M.D.― periodical insanity is so closely allied with epilepsy—possessing so many similar aspects—that it may be said to be practically certain that both defects are not only recessive in a Mendelian sense, but are characterized by lack of the same “determiner” in the germ plasm. In which case, an offspring from two such individuals would positively have to lack that determiner.

  And thus, in naming the case involving the coming together of two such specifically tainted parents, André Marceau did—exactly as he stated in the handwritten notation on one of his scripts—name the “true mechanics of his dispatchal.”

  Now, indeed, we can cable across a few simple instructions to alter a certain limited section of the famous Marceau family tree already over there, and turn it into a pure biological tree, by drawing in the square representing Meyer Bernard Li—and hooking it directly to the circle representing Henriette de Fontno
uvelle Marceau, by virtue of that seduction, and the pregnancy—and subsequent birth of Théophile-which resulted therefrom. And we will, at the same time, destroy the connection representing her non-productive marriage with Aristide Marceau. Moreover, we are now enabled to draw in the circle and square representing, respectively, Meyer Li’s Jewish mother and his father of wholly Italian blood. And to hook them together in the relationship represented by his ruthless and blackhearted violation of her, under opium-drugged coffee that night in Paris in 1807, which violation specifically created Meyer B. Li. Even setting down above and below the symbols the birth and death dates of both, as provided by the information she gives her son in that letter she wrote him, plus a notation on it of the date of her death made apparently by him. And by drawing those circles and squares black where we now know epilepsy or other allied neuropathic taint existed—in that individual, we have a perfect Mendelian inheritance picture done after the manner in which all such pictures are drawn, for the purpose of tracing defects.

  We see by the diagram above exactly why Marceau named Meyer B. Li as his murderer.

  For the details of the family “scandal” which came to him from, presumably, a grand-uncle, contained quite more than I originally knew: merely that one, “M. Bernard Lincoln” had seduced his grandmother. For it contained facts, doubtlessly, attained through the quiet investigation, over in America, of “Mr. M. Bernard Lincoln”; elicitation, moreover, as to the latter’s true legal name, and the fact, moreover, that “Mr. Lincoln” was a victim of curious phenomena indicating of nothing less than the falling sickness. And Marceau saw plainly that the taint which came into his own father from Li, meeting up with a taintless woman like his father’s first wife, Julie Aillaud, permitted nevertheless unaffected offspring such as Henri Philomenon Marceau, and, in turn, the latter’s son, Oliver Edward Marceau; while, meeting up with an allied neuropathic taint in his second wife—Margot LaFarge—a foundling—destined André, the son by that “breeding,” irrevocably to have the disorder which the taint created; indeed, in a “rare and anomalous and fatal form of epilepsy,” as he found set forth in Kalver Haskell’s tremendous empiric Mendelian study. Truly, it seems almost that, in his accusation, André Marceau was prescient of no less than the dictum, issued a month ago, of the World Congress of Law and Ethics, at Basle, Switzerland, expressed in a unanimous resolution which, in the face of the standing of the great jurists and sociologists who passed it, may be said to be a legal ruling unsurpassed in validity in all history.

  RESOLUTION XVI: “Resolved that where an individual knowingly possessed of a communicable taint or disorder which has the power to result fatally, transmits same through an illegal or illicit act of procreation, and that an inheritor thereof dies from that disorder, the original disseminator of the taint shall, under the circumstances, and according to all considerations of civilized thought, be deemed guilty of First Degree Murder.”

  Also becomes 100 per cent clear at last why Chinese things—names—objects—were anathema to André Marceau! For the man who, he figured, caused his father—and hence him—to have the taint, bore a Chinese name: Li!

  There is, however, just one thing wrong with Marceau’s naming—and regarding Meyer B. Li as his murderer. For the one truly guilty is the one who, by an illicit—and “forcible”—act of procreation with Rebecca Rotskoff—created Meyer B. Li himself.

  In short,—according to the above biological tree—and the above profound ethico-legal ruling—André Marceau’s murderer was his Italian great-grandfather.

  22Dr. Karl Oberrund, of the Department of the Psychology of Mathematics of Leipsic University, recently treated this fact in a curious thesis entitled “Distortion of Circular Apprehension into Elliptical on the Part of an Observer Proceeding Ever in a Spiral Path.”

  23One, W. Winchell, who conducts a most exceedingly peculiar journalistic department in the United States dealing chiefly with American ephemera, intuitively forecast this in No. 1 of 3 dogmatic utterances—known, as I understand it, also as “hunches”—which he rendered in print last November in, on the Marceau Case. For he stated: “This new analyst... has a pretty good idea right today... of the why, how, and by-whom of the occurrence in Little Ivington, but lacks yet the one link that will clinch his solution.” Which was quite true, for not till November 16th—as will shortly be shown—did I have the link in question, and that link dealt with the enigma of the dissolution of the shoes. W. Winchell, it may be remarked here, was correct on all his fatidic utterances, for he wrote, under No. 2: “The said analyst’s release date of Feb. 25 will not be determined... by the fact that two men are at the moment in the Brazilian wilds.” That was indeed true. And under No. 3 he wrote, sounding the very benthopelagic depths of true haruscopy: “Marceau’s taking off will be found ultimately to be an outgrowth of some incident that preceded even his famous letter to the London Times.” As has been seen, it was—and by exactly 103 years!

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