THE CHROMATIC WHIMSICALNESS OF AVUNCULI SAMUELIS
“How?” he repeated. “Well, simply by—” He had closed his fingers on the stem of his cocktail glass, preparatory to downing its contents in mutual toast to something or other, but relaxed those fingers with a slight laugh. “You’ll axcoos, pliz, that I hold back a few moments on this interesting-looking drink!—as, to answer your question, I may have to discuss colors—and particularly the nuances thereof!—and the 50 per cent of this that’s pure alky might tangle me all up—not on the colors, perhaps, but on the nuances! So whilst I’m still 101 per cent clear—I’ll stay that way for a few minutes. All right! Well, in the hypothetical case cited—and I answer your question fully in case you are holding anything back on meh!—to protect anybody—or for God knows what reason—well, in the hypothetical case cited, I—assuming, as you already have, that ’twould be I who followed this thing up!—I could go over to the New York Branch of the United States Department of Justice—or to one of several G-men offices that are in town—and get one of Uncle Sam’s P.E.—Publick En’my!—Circulars on the specific gink you and Nick had suspected ‘McCorniss’ to have been; and I could then have taken that circular out to Bleeker’s Island where the dead man now lies in his Roman toga, inside his paperoid casket with removable cover, atop a marble ledge—you see I did read the interment story!—and after correcting the picture on the circular, if any—and the description in it—and the subject’s age in it—for its color, I could be dead certain not only that he was—or wasn’t—McCorniss, but could also—”
“Wait. I—I don’t get that color business? The fake McCorniss could be—uh—any one of half-a-dozen vanished Public En’mies—retired long ago to the softest racket they ever cooked up: spending another man’s fortune. But whaddye mean—correcting the description—and so forth—on the circular—by its color? I don’t—”
“Just,” he explained, a little wearily, for he’d feared he was opening up a question bee, “that Uncle Sam uses a different color each year for those Public Enemy Circulars which he prints for constables, sheriffs, police chiefs, detectives, and all such persons as are int’rested in crime-tracking, and the questioning of suspicious characters. And of course he puts his exact date of issuance on each circular. Though too damned small by far, I’d say, judging from some I saw in the Courier offices today where they were filtering madly through a mess of ’em to get hold of one. One, incidentally, on that fellow Brosnatch, the anarchist, who was arrested this morning in Boston. For I had to screw up my eyeballs to see the date. And—but to try and answer your specific question. Uncle Sam, of course, puts in the age of his criminal subject as it is in and of the year of the circular’s publication. But he has a more—well—emphatic way of conveying that date of publication—the year of it only, that is—than that difficultly found publication date. In short, as I’ve just said: he uses a different colored paper each year! And to be consistent with the psychology back of his own method—am I getting too deep, by any chance, with that word ‘psychology’?—he has closely similar tints—like yellow and orange—follow each other consecutively.”
“Tell me more,” she begged. “I may catch me a Public En’my someday yet—who’ll put me in a penthouse—and treat me swell.”
“You may at that,” he agreed gravely. “For you’re some looker. All right. Well, this year’s circulars are bright green—and because green is so much like blue—next year’s will be blue. As ye Courier Ed mentioned—in explaining it to me. But that’s getting ahead of the present—and who wants to jump into the future? Last year’s circulars were yaller—and the ones of the year before a bright orange. Get it?—orange and yellow coming close together?
“F’rinstance: if you were a small-town police chief—and were contemplating a vagrant in town whom you suspected might be—say—this very Andrew Brosnatch, the anarchist, whose circular I saw today; and you had that circular on Brosnatch—which shows a benign gent of about 47 years of age, with glasses, and says on it: ‘Definitely known to have been born in Poland during the famous St. Mary’s Week Riots, and therefore 47 years of age on date of publication of this circular.’ Now since that circular in your hands was bright orange—”
“Oh—I get it,” she cried. “I would automatically set my mind for a man 50 years of age?”
“Right!”
“And if I was obliv’ous to mere shades of color—shades must a-been what you meant by ‘nuances,’ heh?—well if I was obliv’ous to mere shades of the same color—like yellow and orange—or—or green and blue—I wouldn’t be very far off, thanks to Uncle puttin’ out those similar shades in a’jacent years, in my mental re-a’justing on this hyp’thet’cal ’spicious vag?”
“Exactly!” She was a bright girl all right. “And that’s,” he continued, “why Uncle Sam’s P.E. circulars, comprising thousands of bad men, wanted men and ex-wanted men, make up the Rainbow itself. I saw the accumulated mess today in the Courier office, culled of everybody lying further than 8 years back, and nearly had to put on smoked glasses. No fooling. Take last year’s circulars, for instance: they were pink—as pink as this shirt; while those of the ones of 6 years back, they were lavender—and mighty hard to read—black print on lavender, you know? This year’s are, as I said, a brilliant green jade-green. I saw the one on Pat Mellycutt who never even became a wanted gunman and killer till a few months ago—and wound up his whole career, in the very year he started it, by being riddled to death by G-men’s bullets 2 weeks ago in Toledo, Ohio. That ’un showed a young chap no more, by gosh, than 18 years of age, and even then the circular said, ‘Photo probably 3 years too young; age, however, at time of publication of this circular, 20 years one month!’ And it—but here!—aren’t we going ’way off the track?—with your ‘queschings’? If this alleged fake McCorniss only were some ex-wanted bad-man—and you two virtually suspected who—I could get a circular on that gink, and easily correct it for McCorniss’ years. If, for instance, ’twas café au lait in color—meaning a dirty light brown!—and some of those I saw today were—if ’twas such—and showed a gink of 54 or so with brown eyes unlined with care, I’d add the necessary 8 years in age, and expect to see a gink with pouches under his eyes, old-man marks, or might even see no more than—”
“A dead man in a toga,” she said. And shook her head. “But unfortunately Nick—nor I—have any suspicions whatsoever who ‘McCorniss’ might have been—only the knowledge, and that via Nick, that ‘McCorniss’ wasn’t who he said he was. Plus the knowledge of the existence, in that Verdi Museum here, of the painting of the real McCorniss. Which painting could be viewed before one went down there—or after one came back. And all of which, as I say, is up to you. For my game is over. To blackmail the son-of-a-bitch while he’s alive. Yours—since you’re in the newspaper racket—is just beginning; to show him up—while he’s dead. So what’s the verdict—before we drink to its success?”