CHAPTER XXVIII
Canceled—One Contract!
“By the Gods!” ejaculated Rutgers Allstyn, delightedly. “If the little devil didn’t succeed in doing it—after all!” And, grinning as he uttered them, he repeated softly—and aloud—a certain four words which still lingered powerfully and ineradicably in his recollection: “I’ll find a way!”
Seated in his car during a temporary jam in the heavy after-5 o’clock Michigan Avenue traffic—for this unusual day had seen him catapulted back to Chicago from Logansport, Indiana, whither he had gone; and now bound, in exact opposite direction, to Superior, Wisconsin, where he must needs be!—he grinned even more broadly—from, it might be said, this time, ear to ear!—as he re-read the particular sub-head that was printed in bright scarlet, of the many-headed story printed across the damp Evening Gazette on his knees—and which Gazette had been agilely passed up to him, in exchange for a nickel from which he had waved away the change, by the newsboy on the corner who had perceived both from the stalled traffic and Allstyn’s emphatic half-nod, that a sale could be made. For the bright, scarlet-printed sub-head in that peculiar evening paper whose absolute profligacy in sub-head was diagnosed, by those in the typographical “know” as “Multiple Headitis,” read:
NEW YORK RADIO ENTERTAINMENT CORPO-
RATION TO WHOM HE WAS EXCLUSIVELY
CONTRACTED ANNOUNCES HE HAS
DEFINITELY NOT BEEN IN THEIR
EMPLOY FOR LAST THREE DAYS
BECAUSE OF THEIR HAVING
CANCELLED HIS CON-
TRACT 3 DAYS
AGO!
Allstyn chuckled. And, as the green traffic signal came on, instead of pouring on northward with the Good of cars, he turned off on quiet Balboa Avenue where, completely out of the rush, he drew up alongside the curb. And—thanks to the fact that bright daylight was still coming down out of a quite unclouded sky, due to the continuation this year, over America, of “Daylight Saving” time—Allstyn bent his full attention to the fresh-stamped Gazette now in his hands instead of on his knees. “And him,” he chuckled again, “at a party at Buford van der Zook’s all of last night giving imitations before a dozen or so guests.” And he grinningly re-read that first head. Which—at the instant he had bought the paper—had literally hit him in the face! And which head ran:
RADIO WRITER, ONE OF TWO PERSONS PICKED
UP ON GENERAL SUSPICION AT SCENE OF
CRIME, CONFESSES CHICAGO MURDER
AND SAFE BURGLARY!!!!
“‘I’ll find a way,’” Allstyn again quoted softly. “And Squires—Squires wouldn’t believe he was Sentimental Tommy!”
He continued on with the heads:
KILLER OF NIGHTWATCHMAN PROVES TO BE
AUTHOR OF BEDTIME STORIES TO WHICH
THOUSANDS OF TINY TOTS
HAVE BEEN LISTENING
NIGHTLY!!!
“No more piggle-wiggle—with the spotted ears,” Allstyn said softly. “Or the big gray mousie—with the long white whiskers. At least of the brand Piffingtonian. And my guess is, that the kids aren’t going to be fooled by any imitations, either.” But he forged on:
DETAILS IN FULL, TO CHIEF OF DETECTIVE
BUREAU, HIS REASONS FOR—AND
METHOD OF—COMMITTING
THE CRIME!!
“This, at least,” Allstyn commented to himself smilingly, “ought to be good! But whether or no, it’ll be the test as to whether Piffington is going to strike 12 in his new field!” And he went on. For of sub-heads there appeared to be literally no end!
STORY COMPLETELY CLEARS REDDISH-HAIRED
SUSPECT KNOWN THUS FAR ONLY
AS “JOHN DOE”
“Gad,” said Allstyn, growing serious for the first time, “I hope the idiot hasn’t given clearance papers to some guilty bird. However, the State’s Attorney won’t be letting anybody go just because Piffington has unloaded a boat-load of moonshine.”
And now, continuing, Allstyn came to the bright scarlet sub-head by which he had been particularly intrigued back there in the traffic jam.
NEW YORK RADIO ENTERTAINMENT CORPOR-
ATION TO WHICH HE WAS EXCLUSIVELY
CONTRACTED ANNOUNCES HE HAS
DEFINITELY NOT BEEN IN THEIR
EMPLOY FOR THE LAST THREE
DAYS BECAUSE OF THEIR
HAVING CANCELED HIS
CONTRACT
3 DAYS
AGO!
“Which,” Allstyn commented, nodding slowly, “having been announced by them to the press, is a legal cancellation—and no maybe!”
He went on devouring the sub-headlines:
SUBSTITUTE NEW PROGRAM FOR UNCLE
GRIFFY TEMPORARILY
“Boy, I’ll say he burned the circus up! Uncle Griffy—sponsors—kids—all in the spill.” He chuckled again. “And now for the story. This should be good!”
And he commenced the story proper. Which began:
Piffington Wainwright, radio-writer, and one of two unusual acting or appearing persons picked up today under extremely suspicious circumstances in the foyer of the Klondike Building by Detective “Portfolio” Smith, working specially for the State’s Attorney, and hopelessly entangled in various explanations, confessed late this afternoon, in the presence of police and Captain Matthew Congreve of the Detective Bureau, the burglary last night of the State’s Attorney’s safe, and the murder of the Klondike Building nightwatchman.
“Now what the devil crime was this one, I wonder?” Allstyn queried of himself. “There was absolutely nothing on it in the papers—clear up to noon today. And—”
“Shine your shoes, sir?” said a most intelligent-looking bootblack, of about 16, carrying a few papers also; a boy wearing pedantic-looking spectacles, and so intelligent that Allstyn figured at once he was a high school boy helping, after school hours, to get himself through school.
“No,” Allstyn told him, “but you can take this quarter, if you will, and get me a package of Piedmont cigarettes over there—yes, the store on the alley—and keep the change,” The boy took the quarter. He had a very honest face. “And boy—wait—did some crime story break in today’s paper? Oh, after noon time—but before, say, 4?”
“Indeed there did, sir,” declared the boy eagerly. “Around 2:30 the Despatch came out with a big scoop—about the State’s Attorney’s safe having been robbed last night, around 10:40 or so, and the nightwatchman killed.”
“Around 2:30, eh? The publication of the story, I mean? Well, go ahead and get me those smokes.”
The boy was off. To Allstyn, remembering how Piffington had left his office just before the Despatch must have flashed forth on the stands—and remembering, as though it had been but 5 minutes ago, Piffington’s last dramatic words, “I’ll find a way!” everything fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. All Allstyn wanted to view now was the highly colored illustration the jigsaw pieces purported to set forth.
Wainwright’s break came after an attempt to establish, as an alibi for the known hour of the crime, that he had been at the jai-alai matches at Winterset Gardens last night from 8 till midnight, and he had a seat coupon to apparently establish it. He was proven to be lying, however, by the fact that all the jai-alai matches were called off last night because of the championship disputes, and all wrestling bouts substituted. This he did not know at all!
Allstyn laughed out loud. He was picturing in his mind how far and how hard Piffington would have been booted, had the police gotten the least inkling of that van der Zook party! And would, in fact, be booted, Allstyn realized troubledly, when this beautiful edifice all crumbled in by one of those guests who had been in the van der Zook’s home, there on far South Shore Drive, and a full 20 miles from Chicago’s downtown, phoning in to the detective bureau. As matters undoubtedly stood now, however, if any of those guests were reading this story, that individual was doubtlessly presuming that one—or all the rest of the guests—was communicating with police headquarters. Which very psychological fact—Allstyn ruminated—Piffington, by no means a simpleton, had realized! And, it is to be admitted, Allstyn was later to discover that Buford van der Zook, of No. 7440 South Shore Drive, had left Chicago that morning for New York City. But right now, and not knowing even this, Allstyn was reflecting that this was the first time in all his history as a lawyer where a man had had, under strange circumstances, to conceal a perfectly good alibi, and offer in its place a “bum” one—and one which, Allstyn was certain, Piffington had elaborated solely out of having read in the morning papers about the calling off last night of the jai-alai matches. As even he, Allstyn, had read. And as for the seat coupon, it was Allstyn’s bet that Piffington—whose parsimonious mode of living indicated that he conserved anything and everything!—had picked that seat coupon up on the sidewalk somewhere—or on a park bench—for he was very much a type of person who would not go to a jai-alai game if admission were free! But Allstyn now ceased his analyzing and synthesizing and went on with the story.
Wainwright’s arrest was one of two made this afternoon by “Portfolio” Smith, a detective-bureau plainclothesman borrowed by the State’s Attorney to cover the foyer of the Klondike Building, and pick up any or all persons who came around there not “looking just right.” Smith’s first arrest the latter turned over to a passing squad car; his second, Wainwright, he took to the bureau himself. The arrest, in the case of Wainwright, was one purely “on suspicion.” For Wainwright came in the building looking very perturbed, but failed to enter the elevator which was then waiting. Instead, he stood and examined the directory board in order to—as is now known—let the elevator go on up, and allow him to take the stairs. But when asked, by Detective Smith—who was struck by his general appearance—who or what he wanted in the building, Wainwright was quite unable to explain. If he had even said he was a curiosity-seeker, he might then and there have been let go. But he made the egregious mistake of not preparing himself in advance with an excuse, if picked up under just the contingency under which he was. And so he was rushed to the detective bureau by Smith in a taxicab.
“Unable to explain!” Allstyn mimicked. “Some day I’m going to re-write this story—but all paraphrased. And that line will read, ‘He flung himself, with a loud hosanna of joy, into Detective Smith’s arms.’” Allstyn paused. “Wonder who the other fish was that Smith caught?” And bent his attention to the story again.
Thirty minutes later, his alibi smashed, and badly entangled in various statements about himself, and about his errand to the Klondike Building, Wainwright broke down and confessed all.
“And now,” Allstyn remarked to himself, “should come Extravaganza—with a big E! Do your stuff now, Piffington boy, old boy!” And he drove on, quite fascinated in spite of the utterly farcical aspect of the whole thing.
Wainwright had, so he said, come back to the building in which, last night, he had operated as a thief and a murderer, because of two reasons: One, that somewhere—either at or since the crime—he did not know which—he had lost, out of his watchpocket, a silver watch with his initials P. W. engraved on its back, and feared that, while in the State’s Attorney’s little office last night, and bending over to examine the contents of the safe which he had succeeded in opening, the watch had slipped to the floor, and slid under, and far back under the safe.
“Not bad at all,” commented Allstyn. “That losing the watch ‘either at—or since the crime’! I wonder where he actually stashed it?—if he even had one at all?” And Allstyn went on with the story detailing the “reasons” why P. Wainwright, Esquire, putatively went back to the Klondike Building!
And two: that Wainright recalled having twice, during his operations there, temporarily removed the leather gloves with which he had shrouded his fingertips: and remembered also once having leaned against the wall with his fingers outstretched, reading Louis Vain’s law graduation diploma. And viewing his crime later in retrospection, he feared that at the time he had so leaned, his ten fingers had been in their unshrouded state, and had left their imprints on the wall; and that some shrewd fingerprint man, dusting the wall for possible prints under pictures—as Wainwright admits having read in some crime story magazine they often did!—would bring the prints out, and crystallize them in a photograph. And because of certain other leads which might and could lead to Wainwright—and which are set forth later in his confession—pin the crime on him. And so, Wainwright said, his attempted return to the office was so that he could wipe away, with his handkerchief, the wall under that diploma before some expert dusted it.
“That, I must confess,” commented Allstyn critically, “is a bit ponderous! And far, far too generous with fingertips. Good God—10! And there must have been ‘pics’ in that story. One of which showed the sheepskin! For—but why, I wonder, did—however, this is Piffington’s party, not mine.” And Allstyn continued:
Wainwright thought, so he told the police, that now that the body of the man he killed had undoubtedly been removed from the office for inquest and so forth, and the premises superficially examined for clues, the office would be in operation again with a secretary; that he could call there on a pretext, decoy her out of the room by a word to the effect that the girl in the room on the floor beneath had asked her to run down there a minute; and, in her absence, he could look hastily under the safe and recover his watch if it were there, and swab off the wall under the diploma. As matters actually stood, however, Wainwright could not possibly have gotten into that office, since an official police-department padlock held the one door tightly closed, and its one key, originally in possession of the State’s Attorney himself, was now in possession of Captain Congreve of the Detective Bureau for the possible use of the Criminal Investigation Department after the inquest should be held.
“What the blamed idiot of a Piffington doesn’t know,” said Allstyn, now downright worried, “is that this thing is going to cost him a billy-hell of a licking—before he’s done. For if I know Mat Congreve and his sidekicks at all, Piffington can’t use up the time of that C. I. Department over there, and then later smilingly walk out. This is something that P. Wainwright’s pulp-paper magazines have never told him! For—” But Allstyn stopped musing, as he noted that the story had now reached what plainly was the highspot of Piffington Wainwright’s inventiveness. And Allstyn bent his full quizzical attention on it.
Wainwright’s story of the commission of the crime is as follows:
As to the actual murder itself, he struck—so he claims—at the nightwatchman Reibach, who came in on him, using the sledge with which he had opened the safe, but struck first in a sheer panic, and not to kill. Then, realizing that the other could identify him later, Wainwright knew he must finish what he had started. And, closing his eyes—he had already felled Reibach now, so he says—he delivered, so he states, on Reibach’s head, the lethal blow. He says that next morning he felt neither regrets nor self-reproach, for the reason that Reibach’s death had been due to take place at that second anyway—by one means or another—and that he, Wainwright, had merely administered Destiny’s dictum.
“I contributed that,” Allstyn smiled. “With that pass I made at that fly—and that philosophical discussion I precipitated. The original opportunist, Piffington! And I’m willing to wager a hundred dollars that Sam Weinheimer will offer him a week at the State-Lake Vaudeville theatre. With all this publicity! Specially when he finds out the fellow can do imitations—even though rotten ones.” And Allstyn went on with the story:
As to the causes out of which the murder and robbery grew, Wainwright asserts that three days ago a reddish-haired man of about 35 years of age fumbled at the door of the trailer in which he, Wainwright, lived, this trailer being stationed back of some billboards on Superior and North State Streets, and the—
“Now comes action and incident,” nodded Allstyn—appreciative, at least, of the technique of Piffington’s “confession,” if not the propriety of it, “laid inside a trailer—and the trailer back of billboards two high!—Piffington’s ‘residence’ was made for this drama.” And Allstyn went on:
—and the reddish-haired man thinking that the trailer, which stood wheel-less and propped up on packing boxes, was abandoned and deserted, and that he could pre-empt it, Wainwright, coming to the door, and seeing that the other was a drifter and adventurer type, invited him in, believing he could pick up some interesting facts to be woven into stories. For the radio bedtime story writer has, it seems, an urge to write fiction! The man, however, would give him no name, but laughingly said to call him “Red.” This man, in talking to Wain—
“Here’s your cigarettes, sir,” said a dignified voice at Allstyn’s elbow. And he looked up to see the exceedingly intelligent-looking bootblack.
“Thank you, lad, and keep the change. And say—just a minute—in that story that appeared at 2:30 today, was there anything about a red-haired man?”
“Oh, yes, sir. A red-haired man—rather, sir, the paper described him as a ‘reddish-haired’ man—identity unknown—was arrested today near the po—”
“Just a minute—and then continue,” ordered Allstyn. “What was the complete description of this man?”
“Just and only, sir, that he was reddish-haired—and about 35 years of age.”
Allstyn nodded grimly. “Just and only there—just and only here! But don’t mind my cryptic comments, my boy. Go on with what you were telling me.”
“Well, the story just was that this man—identity unknown—was arrested near Old Post Office today, and immediately stuck incommunicado in the State’s Attorney’s special lockup. He had a crimson-painted shoebox under his arm, and a skull which had been taken from the State’s Attorney’s safe. At least, sir, supposedly so—anyway! It seems that when accosted by some high Churchman, and asked what was in the box, he said ‘Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.’”
“Good—that is, thanks. And—oh, by the way, were there any pictures in that story? Pictures, I mean, of the place that had been robbed?”
“Indeed there were, sir! Four of them. Showing most everything. Though what puzzled me, if you don’t mind my saying it, was that the pictures had been taken before the robbery!”
“They were? But how do you know that?”
“Well, because, sir, under one of them, which showed an old leather couch alongside a wall—and near the end of the same—were some—some descriptive lines which read—well, they read almost exactly like this—you see sir, I’ve an aunt who collects folding screens, and I have—”
“—a complex on same? I don’t just see anything yet—but go on?”
“Well, the lines under that particular picture, sir, they read practically exactly like this . . .” And verbally the boy proceeded to reproduce something which obviously, because of a particular object in it, a particular personal relationship, had remained prominently in his memory.
“‘Old leather couch,’” he repeated slowly, “‘back of black-burlap-covered folding screen partly shielding which murderer may possibly have slipped when he heard German janitor’s footsteps, outside door of office, and from which hiding-place he may have emerged and cut off latter’s retreat after he entered office.’ But,” the boy added, to Allstyn, “the black-burlap covered screen, you see, wasn’t shown in the picture.”
“Well, my dear lad, the news photographer couldn’t show a couch very well, could he, if he’d proceeded first to screen it off with a black-burlap-covered screen?”
“But merely to show the couch, sir, that lay back of the screen which itself was the subject of the descriptive matter isn’t—isn’t logic—to me. However, sir, to get down to a better case of what I had reference to, in one of the photos which showed the State’s Attorney’s old safe, the safe door was closed, and a scarf hung partly down over the front of it. Whereas, had the picture been taken after the robbery, the news-photographer would have been sure to have shown the safe with its door wide open—and its dial smashed—and all that, don’t you know?”
“Right you are, my boy. You’ve a mighty good head on you. Well, I’m as puzzled as you, I fear, as to how such pictures could all have been available in advance. And—but one of them showed a diploma, didn’t it, on one wall?”
“Why, yes—but—but how, sir, since obviously you never saw the story, could you know—”
Allstyn smiled. “Oh, I’m seeing the story just now, sort of—of taken apart and put together again—in another story! Which—but now about those pics—well—was there a by-line on that story! Meaning—”
“Oh, I know what a by-line is, sir. For I’m taking junior journalism in my high school course. But there was. The story was by a man named Hugh Vann.”
“Named Vann, eh? Well, there we are! Relative of our own State’s Attorney. And probably had the pics all ready—but taken for another purpose. Well, my bop, thanks—and here’s a quarter.”
“Thank you, ever, ever so much, sir.” And the boy gave a courteous bow, showing that he came from a good family. And moved off.
And Allstyn resumed the story. Piffington, he saw now plainly, had grabbed on to the fact that the State’s Attorney’s captive had reddish hair, by bringing him into his own story as one “Red”; and thanks to the latter being some tight-lipped criminal whose best bet for the time being was complete silence, Piffington was enabled to spin beautiful pipe dreams involving the other. And an intelligent bootblack’s description, just now, of the pictures of that office interior—including diploma on wall!—reconstructed completely for Allstyn where the resourceful Piffington had gotten his necessary jigsaw pieces. The story continued:
This man in talking to Wainwright, told him the identical story detailed earlier today in a contemporary newspaper: which, briefly, was that he had just landed in Chicago after having come from South America, where he had traveled for some years with a professional hypnotist named Max Köneigsberg. And how, in fact, he was subject to so-called hypno-mesmeric amnesia, quite unresolvable, by any means, he told Wainwright, whenever he gazed twice into—or, so far as that goes, when his gaze even fell upon—a revolving-lamp placed at the focus of converging mirrors. This extreme susceptibility—and which susceptibility tallies with the red-headed man’s own description of the condition set forth today in a contemporary newspaper—was caused, he told Wainwright, by uncountable hypnotizations and mesmerizations by such lamps, and repeated hypnotic suggestions therein. It was, in fact, his telling Wainright laughingly how the first thing he happened to see, on striking Chicago, was just such a revolving-lamp as had been used on him countless times, in a drugstore on Van Buren and Dearborn Streets, and that he intended to remain assiduously away from that corner lest, coming face to face with it again, he lose all memory of the events taking place between such gazings, that Wainwright subsequently utilized this fact for one of the most Machiavellian deeds ever done to an innocent man.
“Let’s see, now?” said Allstyn, meditatively. “There’s three captives in this case! The reddish-haired man, Piffington, and the other suspect picked up this afternoon at the Klondike Building entrance. Now if Piffington, by any fool chance, helps that reddish-haired man to slip out free—and then later gets booted out himself—when his ironclad alibi comes to life—well, I hope that one remaining suspect is worth while!” He shook his head helplessly. And resumed the story.
When the reddish-haired man asked Wainwright if he could stay there with him for a few days, Wainwright granted him the permission, as the man was clean, and honest-spoken, and there was an extra swing-couch in the once commodious trailer, now disbandoned. The reddish-haired man’s subsequent movements in Chicago were, however, Wainwright says, rather mysterious, and none were ever known to him. With the single exception that, on the man’s second day there, Wainwright saw him reading a piece in the morning paper, and then contemplating him, Wainwright, curiously. A short while later, the reddish-haired man wrote a letter on blue paper, which he went out immediately and mailed. On examining the newspaper, Wainwright found that the story the reddish-haired man had been reading was one to the effect that the State’s Attorney, through a fund granted him by an anonymous politician, would pay $10 reward to all persons notifying him personally of the names of Pansies, if and when such persons were investigated and confirmed to be such, and sentenced in court as such, and if such notification was of record with the State’s Attorney.
Wainwright was, so he says, horrified at the thought that his name had been sent in, because he utilizes rouge, for purely aesthetic purposes, and his appearance might be misconstrued. For to be taken up and tried on such a charge would, he said, knock out—and sky-high—a possible marriage he expected to contract, though he will not give the name of the woman in the case. At any rate, going out immediately to a drugstore, he looked up the State’s Attorney’s number, and found him to be located apparently in a Washington Street building; and, calling that number, found that the State’s Attorney himself was out of town, and would be out of town till next morning.
Troubled, he went downtown to that office, in quite blissful ignorance that the State’s Attorney had bigger and more official offices in the City Hall, and peeped in it as though seeking some other party. The office girl was telephoning, with her back to him—
“There was a keen stroke!” Allstyn said. “If he’d so much as rung her in—she’d have knocked his confession sky-high by testifying she never saw him in her life.” He went on, a sneaking admiration for P. Wainwright’s inventive powers growing within him.
—with her back to him, but he saw a safe of the most ancient type. And realized, with a terrible shock, that his name—contained within a blue letter penned by “Red”—was in that safe—for investigation, arrest and publicity. And that it must—it must!—be gotten out somehow! Before the State’s Attorney got back.
And right afterwards he made up his mind. If criminals could do it, he could! And would! For a score of pulp-paper magazine stories he had read had said that all that had to be done to a safe like that, to open it, was to hit its dials with a sledge. And as for the door of the office, a score more of such stories had said that the principle of Archimedes—commonly called a jimmy!—was the simple answer.
“Which little paragraph in Piffington’s ‘confession,’” Allstyn commented dryly, “means that all the pulp-paper magazines will be ordered off the stands tonight by our Mayor! And an injunction suit by the publishers thereof filed—to get back on! This confounded clown has even started a fire in the circus grounds of the next town up the road—New York!” And with a sigh Allstyn went on with the story.
And so last evening, Wainwright says—after, that is, “Red” had vanished from the trailer for parts unknown—he went downtown and entered the Klondike Building before it closed, carrying a sledge, which had been in the toolbox of the trailer, wrapp—
“Ah!” said Allstyn. “I wondered how he was going to make the sledge materialize! His story was up the flue—if he’d tried to say he’d bought it.” And went on:
—wrapped in a sheet of heavy wrapping paper tied with twine. And a crowbar, from the same tool chest, under his coat. He concealed himself, he says, in the washroom of the building, and, when all was quiet, jimmied the old door easily with one pry of the crowbar. He wore leather gloves, he says, as did the hyper-professionals in the pulp-paper magazine stories he had read. Once inside—the door shoved snugly to behind him—and the lights on—he had, he says, a profound and almost overpowering illusion that another person was in the room with him—for he distinctly heard the “thump, thump, thump” of a human heart; and, practically convinced that the office girl must have remained down late, curled up on the couch that lay partly back of the black-burlap-covered folding screen—
“Long live news-pictures—but especially their captions!” Allstyn half nodded. “For the identical cap that our little newsboy friend just expatiated on has supplied couch and folding black-burlap-covered screen—and given Piffington a beautiful pair of highlights for confessional purposes.” And he went on:
—practically convinced that the office girl must have remained late, curled up on the couch that lay partly back of the black-burlap-covered folding screen, and gone to sleep, he crossed the room cautiously—step by step—till suddenly, when three-quarters of the way across, the outlines of the couch loomed up between the interstice of the burlap as one hundred per cent empty—and quite devoid of human burden! And then only, Wainwright says, did he learn that the “thump, thump, thump” in his ears was only the beating of his own heart!
“An artistic touch, that,” commented Allstyn—and truly sincerely. “And one which only an ex-burlap specialist—‘lapilist,’ I think he called it?—as he once was in New York—and inventor of a weave formula based on burlap’s ‘transparency’ could ever have fabricated.” And realizing—and strangely, too, for the first time in his life, since Allstyn had never been much of a reader of fiction, much less analyzer thereof—what a single touch of “authoritative” concrete “detail” could do for a document such as Piffington’s creation must have been, Allstyn went on, more than exceedingly impressed now.
And finding thus that he was alone, he became, Wainwright says, suddenly calm. And went to work. And strictly according to pulp-paper lines. And the safe door swung open, Wainwright also avers, more easily—
“And now, of details we get—none!” Allstyn commented, now momentarily the severe critic. “He should have elaborated just a bit here, and—but it’s expecting too much I dare say for a ‘burlapalist’ and bedtime-story writer to be able to expatiate on the knobknocking phase of this penny-dreadful. And besides, the results of this document—down New York way!—are all that count, anyway.” And now the pragmatist, instead of the lit’ry critic, Allstyn pressed on.
—swung open, Wainwright also avers, more easily than those safe doors did in the various stories he had read. But he found, in this particular safe, not a letter. And only later did he realize that such letter would be in some more official City Hall office of the State’s Attorney. At any rate, interrupted by Reibach, he felled him—then killed him, as has already been related. And, to cover up the motive for his crime, he took from the safe the only thing of importance it apparently held, which was a paper-wrapped object on which, on the bottom, was penciled lightly “Wah Lee’s skull, evidence; case unknown.”
“And there,” commented Allstyn, “is the probable flaw of the entire beautiful structure he’s reared! For he gets the identity of the stolen goods from a newspaper story—but attributes his knowledge of them to a penciled notation! I’ll bet one million dollars the girl secretary never bothered to write, on that wrapping, the contents. For—but why, I wonder, didn’t the Department check that by a phone call to her? Well—we’ll see. Now where the devil will Piffington dispose of that sledge?”
But the next two sentences disposed of that question. With the paper-wrapped skull under his arm, the jimmy under his coat, and the sledge crudely re-wrapped, Wainwright slipped from the building. Straight to the river he went, down on the lower embankment, and thence toward Dearborn Street. Far out into the middle of the river somewhere he flung the jimmy. The heavy sledge he got rid of simply by tearing off the end of the paper wrapping, and letting the tool slip silently forth into the dark river at Piling NO. 37—NO. 37, according, at least, to the electric light on the upper Wacker Drive level. The paper he then tossed onto the water, where it floated rapidly away.
Allstyn couldn’t help now but laugh aloud. Even a passer-by looked curiously at him.
“Goes Mr. Jimmy,” Allstyn said to himself, “out somewhere in the bosom of dark Madame River. And goes Mr. Sledge down into no less than to feet of sludge and slime and murk and mud! And quite unfindable! And I—I told this bird he couldn’t do crime stories! Alack and alas!” Shaking his head—but only at himself!—he continued:
Once back home at his trailer, with the stolen skull, Wainwright realized that “Red,” reading the story next morning of that safe burglary, and reflecting on it, might put two and two together—go to the State’s Attorney—and his testimony might result in his, Wainwright’s, arrest, at least as a suspect. And Wainwright was worrying more and more about those possible fingerprints he thought he might have left on the wall under the diploma. But morning came—and no story in the particular paper that is flung daily over the billboards at the door of his trailer . . . And no “Red” either. Wainwright wanted to go downtown badly, he says, to see the later editions, but dared not leave the skull there, lest “Red,” returning in his absence—for he had shown the latter how to open the door without any key!—might prowl the trailer and find the skull; and so, tearing off the paper wrappings, and burning them, he put the skull in a white shoebox which he tied as though it contained merely a pair of shoes, and went downtown with it under his arm. Downtown, he found that the robbery had apparently not yet been discovered. Perhaps—so he figured—the secretary was late to work that day. But he knew the crime would be discovered any moment. And it was only downtown there that, remembering “Red’s” case of recurring hypno-mesmeric amnesia—and also a certain thing that “Red” had conveyed to him—that Wainwright conceived, so he says, a Machiavellian plot to not only erase from “Red’s” mind the single incident that might focus suspicion on him, Wainwright, but also save him, Wainwright, by sending “Red” to the chair!
“Wow!” said Allstyn. “How the papers must have loved this! The newspaper boys owe Piffington one fine dinner, I’m thinking!” He went on:
For Wainwright knew, he says, that all State’s Attorney’s captures are, when arrested, taken straight to the State’s Attorney’s special lockup in the City Hall. For he had once patiently stood by the famous door “from which no man returneth,” and where also, he had noted, was the window of some drugstore calling itself also “The Little Revolving Lamp Drugstore.” And he knew that if he could get “Red” picked up on a State’s Attorney’s case—and what case could be more a States’ Attorney’s case than the robbery of the State’s Attorney’s own safe?—”Red” would he hustled straight to that door, and would, on seeing that revolving lamp, lose all memory of all events centering about himself in Chicago—though such story would never, never be believed by the police.
And so he decided directly to involve “Red” in an incident where the latter would get picked up under damning circumstances—and pronto. And the method by which he would do so, he says, was suggested by his seeing—while he himself walked troubledly along Old Post Office Block—a girl with a lavender gripsack, or rather, carpet bag made of lavender carpeting, going along, with people gazing after her and the gripsack as though both were curios. And so—
“The gal with the lavender gripsack!” commented Allstyn amusedly. “Whom in reality Piffington saw this morning—when he was registering a manuscript to New York! There, at least, is fact—for a change. Lavender gripsack! ’Twould be one grand finale to this comedy of errors if she were found somewhere today—and had a couple of skulls herself in her gripsack!” But Allstyn realized that he too now was soaring on the wings of hypermelodramatic invention. And reined himself sharply in. Went on with the story, in fact. Which now changed its setting again to that stage so conveniently placed behind high billboards—and with witnesses none!
And so, going back home—for his story was all set in his mind—Wainright found “Red” at last returned. And utterly downcast in spirits. So much so that he revealed at last, Wainright says, his real identity and why he had come to Chicago. His name was, he said, Jack Melbourne; he was, he said, from Australia originally, having been brought from there to America, when a small boy, by an uncle now dead; and stated that he had many relatives living in Australia today.
“’Twas evidently about here,” Allstyn said shrewdly, “that Piffington managed to grab hold of a concrete name for his man ‘Red’: and gave him, I note, the commonest two names in all Australia—and a dead uncle, on this side of the world, to boot!” And went on:
He had come to Chicago, he said frankly to Wainright, to blackmail a certain man, residing in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, who had once been a purveyor of inside police information to a band of criminals. “Red” did not, Wainright says, use the actual word “blackmail,” but put it urbanely that he had come to “gently induce this man to set him up, in a small business, in the man’s own suburb of Evergreen Park.” This man, he said, while touring Rio de Janeiro a couple of years ago with a Cook’s tour, had heard a lecture of Königsburg’s and had later come to the latter’s hotel, and had had a private medical hypnotization for some nervous disorder. At this hypnotization, “Red” Melbourne had assisted. During the hypnosis, however, the man accidentally revealed that he had been, years and years back, in Chicago, the inside information man—the bridge from the Law to Crookdom—for a gang of criminals known—so he said—as The Parson Gang—
“Said gang name furnished,” groaned Allstyn, “by yours truly!” And went on:
So “Red,” fulfilling an intention of long, long duration, had come to Chicago to look this man up. And to—after, of course, surveying the whole situation pro and con—force money—or the favor of being set up in business!—from this man because of what the latter had revealed. But—alas for “Red”—he had just ascertained that his man was not in Evergreen Park, much less in Chicago, Cook County, or even Illinois, as it appeared! Nor would he be for months and months to come. And was, therefore, not in the least a source of money—or financial favors!—for “Red.”
Wainright waited patiently till the other had talked himself out. And then sprung on “Red” the story he had concocted. Which was, in short, that he, Wainwright, was in secret a Federal under-cover man. Indeed, he says he showed “Red” a Federal badge, which he had actually picked up some days before, and never turned in—and which badge he now says he has tossed into the river from one of the bridges, but doesn’t recall which.
“That—river!” said Allstyn. “The without-which-not of this affair, all right, all right!” He went on with the story:
He told “Red” that he had been delegated to make a criminal “meet” with a man, carrying a bright box of crimson, with a skull in it. And that an operative friend of his was delegated to follow the man. But he had just received word, now—so he told “Red”—that his fellow operator would not be able to play in; and, rather than call up the chief and arrange for a new man, he offered “Red” $10 to perform the actual act of “making the meet”—and would, in that case, he told “Red,” himself follow the man. “Red” avidly agreed, he says. And on the basis of payment after completion of the job. So Wainwright hastily painted over his shoebox with some crimson ink he happened to have in the trailer. And instructed “Red” that the latter was to stand on the north-east corner of Old Post Office Block—at noon—and, when the criminal came up—and the criminal might, Wainwright told the other, be dressed in any manner whatsoever—and asked, as a code message, “What have you in the box, buddy?” “Red” was to say, “Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.” All of which dialogue Wainwright says he obtained from the same source that he obtained the method of robbing the safe: namely, pulp-paper magazines.
“The pulps again!” Allstyn commented. And added, reprovingly: “He should have involved the 10-cent burlesque shows a little—and given Mayor Sweeney a really good chance for a grand civic purification. However, maybe he will involve ’em yet.” And, hopeful of most anything now, he drove on with the story:
And he would, Wainwright told “Red,” himself follow the man who would approach “Red” with the cryptic query. So, “Red,” accompanying Wainwright downtown—to Old Post Office, in fact—took from the latter’s arm the box, and took up the prescribed position. The while Wainwright stood off some 20 feet, putatively the “shadow” in the case. But “Red” did not, for some reason, get questioned by anyone but an obtuse patrolman who merely strolled on. And then by a clergyman of sorts, who presumably thought “Red” was drunk. And while figuring how to get into a drugstore and tip off the States’ Attorney’s office anonymously, Wainwright saw “Red” picked up by a squad car. Eagerly, he says, he watched the papers. And found, evidently, that his plan had worked perfectly. For at 2:30 a minor contemporary of this paper, which has been enabled to receive inside facts only through relationship of one of its men with the State’s Attorney, came out with the full story of the crime—and the full story of the arrest—and the fact that “Red” had, putatively at least, become amnesiac over the whole period of his stay in Chicago.
“While in the meantime,” Allstyn commented, “ ‘Red’—in limbo and incommunicado—is keeping his trap tightly shut as to what he pulled last night for some underworld bigwig, and doesn’t even dream that his wild—oy-yoy, how wild!—’amnesia’ story is being backed up by one of the half million people who read it. If he even knows it got into print—which I doubt. Probably he’s trying to fabricate some wild, wild story to account to the State’s Attorney for having a Chinaman’s skull on his person. For he’s the safe-buster all right, all right—and not that other suspect picked up by Smith. Since—” But Allstyn, with a deep sigh, gave it up—and went on with the story instead:
But seeing that his plan had gone through, Wainwright feared suddenly, for the first time, that “Red’s” amnesia might be pierced by hypnotism—and lead straight to himself. If it did, of course, he told himself, he would brazen it out—and claim that “Red” was the burglar. But he had—as it has been said—found that his watch was missing—and also realized that he might have left his fingerprints under that diploma. And so he decided, before “Red’s” amnesia might be pierced by hypnotism, to remove the last possible things that could incriminate him, Wainwright. And thus—as a result of visiting the Klondike Building to remove them, and of being taken up on suspicion by Detective Smith—and of being brought to Captain Congreve’s—and of becoming hopelessly entangled in his explanations—to full confession.
Wainwright is—or rather was!—the little-known author of most of the Uncle Griffy Bedtime Animal Tales for Tiny Tots, delivered over the United-Evening Chain. And was—up, that is, to three days ago!—under contract with the Radio-Entertainment firm of Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster of New York City. Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster were unable, however, when confronted by the New York representatives of the various Chicago papers now carrying this story—and each of which representatives naturally received a telegraphic flash of Wainwright’s confession here, involving Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster as employers—to cast any additional light on their former, employee, stating that he had always been for them a somewhat enigmatic figure, even to rendering—as a legal name—the mere name of “P. Wainwright,” and claiming that he had been christened thus because of the wishes of some grandfather; to which the firm also added that not until the news of Wainwright’s being a murderer was brought to them, did they even know that—in Chicago and the Midwest—Wainwright used, for a first name, the name “Piffington,” arbitrarily selected by him. They did announce, however—through Sam Collerman, vice-president—and over the firm’s official signature given out in multiplicate to the various news representatives—that P. Wainwright’s services with the company had terminated 3 nights ago, etc., unknown to himself, and through their optional cancellation of his contract.
The story was nearly ended now!
“Well, all I can say,” was Allstyn’s comment now, “is that he was able to do for himself, the little be-rouged devil, what I couldn’t do for him! It seems, after all, that God helps those who have the guts to help themselves. And—”
And now he chuckled so loud that 2 passers-by nudged each other, for the final paragraph ran:
Wainwright, when informed that his contract was cancelled, had a face a mile long, and stated sadly that it would have been possible only through continued work in his line, in his cell, to obtain adequate legal counsel.
And now the story was ended.
And Allstyn’s laugh faded.
“Yes,” he said, “he’s achieved—what he was after. And now it’s up to Rutgers Allstyn to rescue him.”
And throwing forward his starting lever, he turned his car toward the Detective Bureau.