CHAPTER II

Concerning a Negro Laborer, a Girl From New Zealand, and a Chinaman’s Skull!

“Th’—th’—skull—o’ Wah Lee?” gasped Big Gus, Even his ever highly colored bulbous nose turned a deathly pale. “Jee—sus—Gawd!” he added, passing a huge, hamlike hand over his forehead. “An’—an’ the S. A.’s got it? Jesus! Christ! An’ here—me—me due to hit th’ bricks this week—Friday—my 15-year stretch, wit’ th’ even 5 off for good behav’or—up. An’—listen, Ej’cated, are you sure—what you’re telling me?”

“Am I sure?” replied the other. “Hell, Gus, would I be toting Con No. 1 away from the warden’s office—if I didn’t have some real McCoy to hand you?”

“Well—well, goddamn it to hell, Ej’cated—you ain’t handed me nothing yet. Hurry, goddamn it—an’ give me the lowdown. Spill it. Where’s the sconce? Who—who dug it up? When was it dug up? Who—”

“Easy, Gus! Easy! You’re sweating like hell. Plain to see you was in on the bumpoff of the Chink boy all right. As well as the snatch. But that’s your biz—not mine. And I’ll give you the lowdown quick—for if I’m nabbed in here with you, it’ll be the end of my trustyship, and—”

“Well goddamn it,” bit out Big Gus, frantic for the entire news of which he had just had the gist, “your 5-year bit—with th’ 20 months off—is up in 60 days anyway. So what th’ hell—even if they stick you in th’ hole? Goddamn it—give it all to me. Quick.”

“All right, Gus. Here it is. And so’s you’ll know it’s the McCoy—and no rumor fakealoo—let me say it comes straight from a lad that’s keeping company with an office girl hired by the S. A.—a girl up from New Zealand only about a year or so, and named Beryl Burlinghame. The lad is Handsome Harry—a new guy in the racket. The Tritt Mob—most of ’em are people new to you, Gus—but there’s a couple of old-timers in the mob who are friends of yours—that’s how comes it this news is reaching you now—anyway, the Tritt Mob sicked this bird Handsome on to this young New Zealand gal so’s he could pick up from her everybody or everything the S. A. might work up against the rackets. Which this Handsome’s been doing regular. The S. A. having a habit, it seems, of explaining things to this girl—she being from the other side of the earth, and a sort of—of protegee of his. No—I know you don’t get me on that, Gus—but what I mean is that her father did the S. A. a big favor once. Yes. So anyway, this Handsome’s been picking up lots of things. And picked up plenty—last night! Though on something else. Entirely. As follows: A nigger laborer—named Moses Klump—living alone at 3733 Vernon Avenue—found this sconce about two weeks ago, when digging—over on Goose Island—for a certain gas main intersection for the People’s Gas Company. It seems, Gus, that the gas pressure all over Goose Island was too low—and the P.G.L.&C. Company figured there was blockage at exactly this point—you know!—crust from gas, oil, and so forth—and they figured to uncover the point and try and dislodge the crust. However the hell they do that! Anyway, account of the problems in laying gas mains on Goose Island, this main has crossed right under a number of the old buildings there. And this particular point lay right underneath the wreck of one particular building. And this coon was set by one of the company’s engineers to dig there—by himself—and the exact point where he was digging, Gus, was under the dirt floor in a big hexagonal—that means six-sided, Gus—room that used to be the testing room of the old Schlitzheim Brewery, where—”

“Yeah—yeah—yeah,” put in Big Gus, desperately, thinking of the time his mob had whisked the kidnaped Chinese youth to the deserted and out-of-the-way brewery—not to omit mention, either, it is to be admitted, of how he himself had subsequently despatched the youth by a well-directed shot in the back of the latter’s head—and for good and sufficient reasons! “Ne’ mind all the goeometry, and th’ goeography. Go on!”

“I’m giving you the geometry and the geography, Gus,” said Educated, coldly, “so’s you’ll know absolutely they got the evidence.” He paused. “Well, this dinge Klump dug up the sconce about an even 6 feet under the surface of the dirt—and right at the center of that room—for the company engineer had laid out two strings, crossed, from two angles of the hex, to guide the dinge in reaching that gas main intersection. Anyway,” Educated went on hurriedly, “the dinge said nothing to his boss about having found the sconce, and took it home. Together with the loose lower jaw that was with it. He scraped ’em off, Boiled ’em clean. Fixed the lower jaw to the sconce by some tape or wire or string or something. And had a sort of sweet piece of brickabrack for the dump where he baches. Figuring—so it’s known he said—that if and when his luck in the crap game would bust, he’d chop off a chunk from the skull, carry the chunk around in his poke, and when that chunk wasn’t any good any more, take another chunk, and—you know coons, Gus, how they—”

“Yeah—yeah—yeah. Go on, will you? How in hell did the S. A. git it?”

“Well, the dinge, it seems, had been working on a construction job in South America, when that famous snatch case busted, Gus—and the same, 3 years later, when you were tried—and he didn’t know anything about the history of that old Schlitzheim Brewery there on Goose Island. And yesterday morning—while working on another job somewhere on the South Side—for it seems, Gus, he isn’t even a regular laborer for the gas company—he happens to tell another dinge how he had been working over there on the Island, and where; and of course the other dinge up and tells him the whole story of that brewery—of that very testing room—and how the headless corpse of Wah Lee was dug up there—rather, the eaten-off headless corpse, since—because of the quicklime—there wasn’t—”

“Yeah—go on,” ordered Big Gus peremptorily, sweating profusely.

“Okay! Well, the other dinge told this Klump dinge all about how Wah Lee’s corpse had been found there—buried only two—or three—feet under—and right at the center of that room—the old testing room—and how the state hadn’t been able to prove at all that ’twas the snatched Chink, because the head, the only thing that would have identified it, wasn’t there—and because that San Francisco person testified the way he did, and that old woman, Mrs. Mary Grubbs, testified that—”

“Yeah,” almost screamed Big Gus, “go on! I know all about them things. Since I was virt’ally tried for the snatch. Go on. About this here dinge?”

“Well,” continued Educated helplessly, “the dinge—the Klump dinge, I’m referring didn’t say anything to the other dinge about having found the sconce. It was home in his pantry okay—and he’d never even chopped a chunk off it yet. But he’d heard enough to realize that he’d uncovered—maybe!—the famous sconce that would have sent that snatch case to trial, and—”

“—an’ settled me,” said Big Gus, morosely—a safe enough statement, since the two were alone together. “Go on.”

“So the dinge—Klump—soon’s he gets home yesterday afternoon—for the job he was on came to an end about 3 bells in the afternoon—took a pike up inside the nose of the sconce—and, lo and behold, Gus, he saw where bone had been cleared away on one side only of the nose—the operating, you see, that was done just before you—well—snatched the Chink, Gus; and so he knew then, all right, all right, that he had the long searched-for sconce of Wah Lee. Yes! And so, after printing his initials, M. K.—Moses Klump, see?—it seems he couldn’t write, but could print—in black ink on the back of the skull, just close to the bullet hole—now hold yourself together, Gus, I’m giving it all to you as fast as I can—soon as he does set those letters down—for he was a sort of wise coon and even knew he’d have to identify those letters in court someday—he looked up the S. A.’s name in the telephone directory and marched straight down to the latter’s office with the sconce—wrapped and tied up, of course, in a paper package. Well anyway, the S. A. was out of town—he’d had to go to some funeral of some relative down in St. Louis—and damn lucky for you, Gus, for otherwise this info probably never would have reached you—so the dinge turned over to the S. A.’s office girl what he’d found, told her where he’d found it, and how, and about a central bullet hole in the back of the sconce, and how the bullet must have come out by way of its left eye, shattering the back wall of the eye—hold yourself together, Gus; I’m trying to give you everything—and how some kind of cutting had been done inside the sconce’s nose on the right side—yes—and how he’d stuck the two initials of his John Hancock on it in ink—and to all of which things, Gus, after she stuck the sconce pronto in the S. A.’s safe, she took a full deposition for the dinge. Something, evidently, that the S. A. had always instructed her to do wherever legal evidence was concerned—or wherever somebody would later have to testify to something. And—but I guess that’s all, Gus. The sconce was turned in yesterday afternoon late—the girl passed the whole tale to this Handsome last night—helped, naturally, by Handsome’s foxy questionings—and the S. A. is due back in Chicago tomorrow morning early from his brother-in-law’s planting in St. Louis—got to be back positively, it seems, Gus, for he’s to go in court personally tomorrow morning and buck banker Claussen’s appeal for bail—after which you’ll have to look to see yourself indicted before the day’s out—and tried this time for murder and snatch—instead of, as that other time, conspiracy to snitch ransom coin.”

And Educated, finishing his long exposition of facts, made a helpless gesture with his two hands as much as to say, “Sorry—but I’ve done my part.”

As for Big Gus, he was breathing hard. But he managed somehow to speak.

“I’ll say,” he bit out savagely, “that you brung me bad news. Goddamn bad news! And if ever I hadda think, I gotta think now. Yes, by Jesus Christ—I do!”