CHAPTER X

In Room 806

Outside the station Vann flagged a yellow taxicab—still in a most pleasant frame of mind. The case—why, the case would be, of course, a “pushover.” Too easy, almost, he reflected just a bit regretfully, to take great professional satisfaction in. And at length, after being blocked at several downtown street intersections by passing floods of Loop and department store workers, he was dismounting in front of the Klondike Building, just across Washington Street from the tall towering City Hall which housed his official offices. The Klondike Building, though 12 stories high, was itself an ancient structure whose entrance was marked by an outmoded soapstone arch—and which was sandwiched between two stores, one selling shoes at $1.95 a pair—the other purveying animals and pets.

Inside the dark wood-floored foyer, he waited—with fitting patience—till the single elevator, housed in its wire screen shaft, wheezed its way to the bottom.

And climbed in, the only passenger.

Raising his eyebrows a bit curiously, as the operator, with white hair, stifled a gigantic yawn.

“Well!—well, Peters,” Vann said, “you must have been on some party last night! Yawning—” He glanced at his watch. “—only sixteen minutes after you start work?”

“Sixteen minutes?” retorted the other grouchily, trying the shaft door to see that it was closed, and jerking on the steel cable which started the cage. “Two hours, and sixteen minutes!”

“Two hours—and sixteen minutes?” queried Vann puzzledly. “Why, I thought Adolph—being night watchman—always handled the cage till 8—and then you took on?”

“Right, Mr. Vann,” the other said, as the car wheezed slowly upward. “Only, Adolph went on another spree last night—prior to midnight—and didn’t come back. So the night engineer called the Old Man—and the Old Man rung me at 5 bells this morning to beat it down and take over at 6. Adolph’ll be rolling in, however, before noon—demanding to take over. And I’ll be sending him packing home—to sleep it off. Only that won’t get me back my 2 hours lost sleep.”

“Poor Adolph!” said Vann, as the car creaked past the 5th floor. “A good-hearted chap. Or at least so he’s always seemed to me. For he’s been around here now—if I’m not mistaken—just a week short of the time I’ve been State’s Attorney. But oh—that occasional thirst of his! Why docs the owner of the Klondike keep him on?”

“Why?” asked Peters as the car drew up to the 8th floor, and he stopped it. “Well, Mr. Vann, Adolph Reibach hails—or at least he says he does—from the same province in Germany—Pomerania—that the Old Man, Mr. Kieckhofer—does. Which was why—and no less!—Mr. Kieckhofer bounced out that mighty good Negro nightman we used to have—remember him?—Energetic Enos, I think you called him?—and put Adolph, straight over from Germany, on. In other words, Mr. Vann, the Old Man—Herr K!—has sentiment, don’t you forget—just like you—ever holding your first law office.”

And he swung wide the door.

“I see,” Vann laughed, stepping forth. “Sentimentalists all, eh?”

The bell in the cage now buzzed raucously, indicating another passenger downstairs, and, as the cage started down, Vann himself proceeded up the old dark wooden-floored hall. But marveling, as always he did—how well and efficient and clean this old building was kept up by the punctilious August Kieckhofer, its sole owner. And a moment later he was putting his key in the lock of the door of his room, Number 803.

But, to his surprise, the key did not have to turn—to release the door! And frowning—and opening the door a few inches—he saw immediately why. The lock had been sprung! Moreover—and his face darkened—there were jimmy marks on the wood of both door and door frame at the level of the lock.

Sneakthieves!

Searching for odds and en—

He had swung the door halfway open now, and was himself halfway across the threshold when, glancing across the room itself, he stopped dead—in his very tracks. For a man lay on the floor—on his back—a man clad in clean striped overalls and jumper, and with a large bunch of keys at his waist. And his face was white and set—his dead, unseeing blue eyes staring straight towards the ceiling. His head had been bashed in, for blood—now sticky, coagulated blood—had rolled clear across the floor to the nearest floorboard. And Vann’s horrified eyes, roving straight from the dead face with its odd yellow mustache—a face which he knew to be that of poor Adolph Reibach—came to rest, quite naturally, on his safe.

His—his cheesebox!

Which was all it was. And all, moreover, chat it had proved to be. For its door stood wide open. Its single bolt was shot. Its cast-iron knob and combination dials lay in shattered pieces on the floor in front of it.

And Louis Vann—gazing at the few old books standing in it—knew immediately what had gone out of that safe. What had gone out had been—the skull of Wah Lee! And with it, the nomination and re-election of Louis Vann as State’s Attorney of Chicago!