CHAPTER XXII

The Man in the Brown Goatee

Carr Halsey, perceiving the point of convergence of these two approaches, one being made by the running policeman, and one by the laborer, who was now half across the narrow street, immediately broke into a run himself. He reached the stone steps of his roominghouse almost on the heels of the two other men, who were both already halfway up. Up he went himself, three steps at a time, and reaching the top his eyes were met by a startling scene inside.

The front door stood wide open. On the floor in a huddled heap near the inside threshold lay a slim, feminine figure clad in black silk. Halsey recognized that figure at once. It was Miss Loris. No movement, not a sound came from her at all; and as Halsey pressed forward and peered bewilderedly over the shoulders of the two men who stood staring in the open doorway, his eyes roved mechanically to the door of his room and there rested on a peculiar thing. From the keyhole hung a hunch of keys held together by wire, but the door itself appeared to be still fastened tight.

In an instant the police officer was inside and kneeling at the side of the girl’s body. He raised her head a bit, listened at her chest, and then lowered it. He caught sight of Halsey in the doorway: “Run up the street—the Physicians’ Club—and get a doctor, my friend, will you?”

Halsey stood for several seconds quite petrified by the shock, then, pulling his wits together, he spun on his heel, dashed down the steps, and up the block a very short distance where he pushed his way through the revolving doors of the tall Physicians and Surgeons Club which reared its topmost stories far into the sky, and whose bronze plate with its letters, with their highly polished tops, in relief on the plate itself, Halsey had passed more than once, going tailorward around that very corner. He did not, fortunately, have to indulge in any red tape here, of all places, in getting what he wanted, for a blond clerk back of the counter was idly talking with a slender, smooth-faced, active-looking, professional-appearing man of pleasant mien, whose black leather medical case even now stood on the counter in front of him. Whether he was just coming in—or whether he was just going out—he was a doctor.

“Are you a doctor?” Halsey asked hurriedly.

“Yes. Dr. Anders.”

“Doctor—will you come at once to Number 810½, a few doors south? There’s—there’s been an accident.”

The doctor immediately broke off his confabulation, and jerking up his black case hurried off after the now departing Halsey.

When the latter entered the vestibule of his roominghouse for the second time, the physician who called himself Dr. Anders at his heels, he saw that the police officer and the laborer had carried Miss Loris back through the open door of the room he had rented to her scarcely an hour back. There, as he could see even from the open front doorway, they had let down the automatic inadoor bed that had so intrigued the girl, and had placed her on it. The police officer, however, had not remained there to survey her quiet form, but, with his back to the newcomers, was talking briskly on the hall telephone, and Halsey saw by his finishing words that he was putting in a direct order to the police radio bureau itself, to go out immediately to all the squad cars in Chicago.

“Yes, Radio, I thought it best to report it direct, for he’s fleeing right now and can’t have gone far. Yes, tall man, according to this hasty report I’ve got—well-dressed—about 45 years old—very dark or sallow-complexioned—little stout around the waist—wears a brown goatee cut square at its bottom, and a brown mustache. Yes—driving a big rear-engined gray Cyclops car—the one headlight centered on the front, of course—finished in bright vivid scarlet edging. No, the squad cars can’t miss him. No, only assault and battery—so far as I can see now—may be attempted murder—but attempted burglary anyway. Yes, my full report will go later to North Central station. O.K. Radio.”

And he hung up, and Halsey, as yet totally ignorant of just what had taken place in this house, knew that 500 police cars, each carrying four men, would within ten seconds from now be cruising their beats at high speeds all over Chicago, this huge London of the West, on the alert for a man with a brown square-cut goatee and a big gray Cyclops car edged in scarlet. But who was he? And what was it all about?

Dr. Anders in his rear, with a curious glance at the police officer, who, turning from the phone revealed himself now as a much sunburned fellow with deeply scrutinizing greenish-gray eyes, was pressing on authoritatively toward the open room where the girl lay plainly on the bed, and the police officer followed him, while Halsey stepped to one side and then troubledly and unhappily came up in the wake of the two men most important in this affair, whatever it was.

“Doctor,” the man with the Parks System police badge on his uniformed coat was saying, “will you see how badly this girl is hurt? She’s been slugged, so I understand, somewhere about the head. We’ll step into the hall in the meantime.” The police officer glanced curiously toward Halsey. “Do you live around here?” he queried brusquely. “If so, who runs this place? Who’s in charge?”

“I live right here,” the younger man returned curtly. “This is a roominghouse, run by a Mrs. Mehitable Morely. What’s wrong? What’s happened here? There’ll be no roomers in this place probably before 5:30 or so 6 o’clock tonight, and no proprietress nor maid till much later. Consider me, please, then, in charge. Carr Halsey is my name.”

The officer drew the back parlor door closed, shutting off the doctor. He looked toward the laborer, an indisputable Celt of about fifty-five, with gray hair at his temples contrasting with his vivid blue overalls: “Now, Corrigan, give me the fuller details on this again.”

The overalled man addressed as Corrigan looked toward Halsey: “Will, thir’s nithin’ more to add, O’Malley, thin w’ot I give you roight aff th’ bat. I’m on me knees weedin’ the grass back o’ thim there booshes in Tower Square”—he motioned toward the luxuriant low bushes that ran along on the inside of that small iron fence—“an’ I see this boor-rd droive oop to the foorther corner—the north ind—on the Tower Square side o’ th’ sthreeet, too—in his big gray Cyclops wit’ the scarlet idgin’, an’ l’ave it sthand an’—”

“What bird?” asked Halsey. “The man I just heard described to the police radio? I’m asking because—well—that’s my room where that generous bunch of keys is sticking.”

“The same. Tall filler, will dhressed, about foorthy years o’ age, mebbe a little more, dark or sallow in compliction like as if he had liver trouble, a bit of a billy sthickin’ out on ’im too, an’ wearin’ a brown goatee cut aff square-like, an’ a brown moostache.” The Irish laborer indicated with his fingers the hirsute adornments which he described. “He l’aves th’ car standin’ at the coorner, th’ ingine purrin’ so’s I could just feel it vibratin’ in th’ turf, rather than hear it, an’ he strholls along on the park side o’ the sthreet, casual-loike, and—here, O’Malley—here’s w’at I didn’t have toime to till ye whin ye wanted th’ dirict facts quick—he sthops a minute whin Blind Adolph pesters ’im to buy a l’id pincil. He says somethin’ in a snarl to th’ old biggar, an’ gives ’im a shoove t’ord th’ grass plot, an’ the owld b’y goes up in th’ air f’r fair, wavin’ ’is cane an’ cussin’ this felly out at the top of ’is voice. But the felly wit’ th’ goatee kapes right on goin’ an’ whin he gits opposite this here house, he shtands f’r a minute pikin’ acrost th’ shthreet at th’ froont window w’ere they’s a bottle o’ bluin’ shtandin’ on the froont table. I remimber thot because the sunloight, filtherin’ through the upper part o’ th’ crack in th’ back parlor foldin’ dures shthrikes down through th’ upper idge o’ the liquid, tintin’ itsilf blue—makin’ th’ bottle look somethin’ loike one o’ thim there owld drugstore ornymints o’ 30 year ago, an’—”

“And what happened then?” put in O’Malley impatiently. “Never mind about the unimportant stuff, Corrigan.”

“Well, he loombers acrost the sthreet, an’ goes up the stips. A toortoise cat wid wan eye—I know the cat well, f’r ain’t I growin’ him a bit o’ catnip in the coorner o’ the park there, an’ don’t he come over now an’ thin joosth’ to see me?—or maybe to ate th’ catnip f’r all I know!—is slapin’ on the front stoop, waithin’ f’r somebody to come along an’ let him in. The felly wit’ th’ brown goatee pikes th’ poor cat aff a bit, ugly-like sort o’, and thin heaves aff wid th’ flat of his fut an’ gives th’ poor baste a smack on its behind. Th’ cat gives a yowl, an’ skedaddles aff th’ poorch and oop th’ sthreet; and the whilst the cat’s b’atin’ it, th’ felly’s ringin’ th’ bill. After siveral minut’s, so it seems, a young woming—this one here, in fact—comes to the dure. He talks wid her. There seems t’ be some argymint. Suddenly he poikes back of ’im t’ord th’ sidewalk an’ sthreet, an’ there’s no wan in sight, me not bein’ visyble back o’ th’ booshes acrost th’ way. Like a flash he r’aches in his back pocket, joorks out a owld-toime leather blackjack an’ clips her a terrifick smash over the soide of her h’id. Even before I c’n get ahff o’ me knees she dr-rops shquare in her tracks; an’ he stips in over her body, joorks out a bunch o’ keys an’ sticks ’em in that dure there.” He pointed at the door of Halsey’s room.

“I joomps to me fate and hollers ‘Polace!’ Thin”—he turned to the officer—“I seen ye at your thraffic post at Pearson an’ Nort’ Michigan where the photy-elictric eyes ain’t niver been insthalled yet, givin’ a ticket to a black Edselette, and I hollers louder an’ points acrost this street. But consid’able befoor ye hove in soight, O’Malley, comin’ around the nort’ soide o’ Pearson Sthreet onto the wist soide o’ Tower Coort, figurin’ I sippose to head annybody off who moight be fleein’, th’ guy wit’ th’ brown goatee, kneelin’ at this here dure, looks out, joomps to his fate an’ runs out th’ dureway an’ down th’ short way to th’ corner where he joomps into his big gray Cyclops and he’s off and wist on Pearson in a sicond, before I even gets over thot there iron fince. Thot’s all, O’Malley.”

The officer wrinkled up his sunburned forehead: “Well, he won’t get far in a car as striking as that, I’ll assure anybody; and him with a square-cut goatee to add to the car’s description. He’s as good as headed off right this minute. Although,” he added speculatively, “goatees themselves are common enough again, these days.” He stepped toward Halsey’s door and first turning the knob and finding that the door was still locked, jerked out the wire-strung keys. He looked them over critically, and nodded. “Bunch o’ clever skeletons,” he commented briefly, “Like prowlers used to carry ten—twenty years ago. Enough here to fit a thousand locks. And every variety to boot. See, desk skeletons—closet skeletons—suitcase skeletons, too—” He looked toward the youngest man of the trio. “Who’s this young woman? And have you got anything in your room what any one could be after?”

“The young lady,” said Halsey, “is a Miss Loris who just came here to room. As for me—” He thought hard for a moment on the bottle of blue liquid in his room; likewise on the fact that with that mysterious article was, perhaps and perhaps not—it depended entirely on a cablegram not even yet received from far-off England—somehow connected, in some obscure commercial sense, the Jap who was the solution toward finding the man who in turn was the key toward this million-dollar Zell Process sale. And he drew his lips into a thin hard line and decided to say nothing. “As for me,” he finished, “I’ve got nothing on my premises, outside of a few suits of tailor-made clothes, that would be worth the stealing, let alone the having; nothing worth over—well—six dollars!”

The momentary silence following his unequivocal answer was broken by a mechanical “tap-tap-tap” that seemed to come from across the street. Visible through the open door of the house, and over on the narrow flagstone sidewalk that surrounded Tower Square, was the figure of an aged man proceeding painfully and slowly along. He was wrinkled and bent, and his ill-assorted clothing was in tatters. One hand clutched tightly and desperately a stout blackthorn cane which nosed its way along the sidewalk; the other, faltering and trembling, held forth a meager half-dozen or so of lead pencils and a brassy tin cup. On his eyes were cracked green spectacles, and his gaze kept itself unseeingly on the vista in front of him. The traffic officer turned to the park laborer.

“You say he and blind Adolph had some kind of an argument? There’s the old boy crawling along on the other side of the street now. Bring him over, Corrigan, and we’ll see if he can throw any light on matters.”

The overalled Corrigan was down the steps in a second, across the street, and grasping the arm of the blind beggar. A few indistinguishable words followed and the Irish gardener was shortly leading the ancient mendicant across the street to No. 810½, the blind man’s cane tapping wildly as he tried to keep up with his guide. In a few seconds the two men stood in the hallway, the tin cup in the palsied hand of the aged beggar playing a tintinnabulum against the lead pencils.

“Adolph, this is O’Malley, the traffic officer at Pearson Street and the Drive, talking. We’re trying to get some line on a fellow you just had an argument with. What happened when you accosted him?”

The vacant green-shaded eyes turned themselves in the direction of the voice.

“Yah,” he cried in a shrill tone, “er gieb mir nothing but ein poosh! Ich sag: ‘Kannst du helfen a poor man vas can not see aus by sein augen?’ and er sag zu me: ‘Heraus, verückter; Ich had nichts,’ und er gieb mir ein poosh vas nearly make mir fallen off dass sidewalk and ich nimm mein stick und ich shout: ‘Du hund! Ich bin nich verückt. Ven ich sehen konnen wird ich dich beaten for pooshing ein alter blinde mann’; und ich gang—”

“Wait—wait—wait,” groaned the police officer. “That’s enough, Adolph. One question: Are you speaking German or English? What did he say in English?”

“Ich sprech gut English,” the old man shrilled, “aber er war Deutscher und speak mir only Deutsch.” His grasp tightened convulsively on the blackthorn cane and he shook it wildly in the air. “Ich bin ein alter man und—”

“Enough, Adoph,” said the policeman. “In other words—Genug! That’s all we want to know.” He motioned to the park laborer. “Lead him back across the street, Corrigan.”

The latter led the old fellow, still mumbling and gesticulating, back to the protection of the opposite sidewalk, and returned to the open house. In the meantime Halsey stood silent and the officer stood thinking. With the return of the overalled man and the fading away of the tap-tap-tap of the blind man’s cane, the traffic bluecoat drew out his notebook and spoke. “Well, we’ve got his description and know that he speaks German,” he announced briefly. “A high-toned sneak thief, with a hot car, at work; that’s all. Stolen, that Cyclops is, sure as you’re born. Well, Cyclops and goatee will be enough to get him, for between the squad cars and the loud speaker on the corner pole at every street intersection where there is a traffic officer on duty instead of p.e. eyes, he can’t possibly escape a ‘Halt’ command unless he’s willing to let a bullet kiss him. That is, unless he ditches the car on some side street. However, in that case the car itself’ll be found in less than no time.” He opened up the book he had withdrawn from his pocket, and went on discoursing as he thumbed over its pages. “Well, folks, that means hard times are coming back! This is a specific type of petty crime—class B-7-sub c—this knocking down of landladies and roomers on high-toned streets and making a stab at the nearest room with skeleton keys—and it always precedes the return of hard times—if we’re to believe Professor Netley who teaches Friday nights in the Chicago Police School of Criminology. And he generally knows his stuff!” He poised his fountain pen over a blank leaf. “Now if you’ll give me your full names and initials, please, and—”

The door of Miss Loris’ room suddenly opened in hack of them, and the doctor came forth, in one hand a shining hypodermic syringe and in the other his carrying case. “How serious, Doc?” asked the policeman, looking up.

The doctor’s gaze went from face to face. “Who is in charge here?” he asked. His eyes rested on Halsey. “You live in this house, do you, sir?”

Halsey nodded.

“Well, the young lady’s been badly stunned by the impact of something heavy against the side of her head.” He glanced toward the officer. “I think I heard you reporting that she was slugged. Yes? Well, she was, beyond any doubt. The skin isn’t broken at all; so whatever weapon slugged her was covered with a soft covering of some kind.” He turned back to Halsey. “However, there’s a purple welt there, where she was struck, and already it’s as big as a doorknob. One inch nearer the fragile bone structure of the temple and it would have killed her, sure. It may try—just try, that is—to evolve into concussion of the brain, so I’ve injected a new specific to guard against that very thing—Myolpin, it’s called, in case you should take occasion to summon any other physician. In fact, if you do call another doctor, better let me talk to him first and explain just what I’ve administered to her thus far.” He paused but a second. “Now this drug will not only reduce her heart action very appreciably, but it will relieve the cerebral pressure that may try to take place at that point where she was struck. Indeed, it’s a 99.9 certain insurance against serious trouble, in her case. Now what’s most important, though, for your or her landlady to understand, is that the Myolpin has an additional effect that may alarm you all. That is, it will keep her in a profound stupor—a coma—for many, many many hours. She’ll not be conscious at all of her surroundings. For the number of minims of this synthetic alkaloid I’ve injected, that condition will keep up all of tonight and all of tomorrow, at the very least. Now while I feel that the Myolpin will pull her through quite safely—it’s a new drug, as I say, but has a tested 92-percent positive record in a series of several hundred far more serious hospital concussion cases than this—and worked out with controls, too—she will need some attention. If you don’t want to send her to a hospital—and really, I’d rather suggest that in any event she stay quiet now for some hours anyway—then you’d better let me send around an X-ray man with one of the new portable Schweinlitz X-ray sets, and take a few radiographs of her skull to make absolutely certain there’s no fracture—although I’m sure there isn’t. And—”

Halsey broke in at this point. “If she needs attention, Doctor Anders, then she’ll need a nurse. How soon can you get one, Doctor? Carr Halsey is my name. Miss Loris is—well—a friend of mine. And by all means send the man with the Schweinlitz set. Pictures—yes—all that you would need, by all means. I’ll guarantee all the charges and your bill as well.”

“Well, we won’t worry about my bill just now,” said the medical man complacently. “It may not even consist of more than one visit, perhaps. You can pay the Schweinlitz X-ray man $10, however. As for a nurse, then, there’s a Miss Kinneally who lives on the nurse’s floor at the Club up the street; she just went off a case in Evanston this noon, for she came in while I was standing at the desk, and talked to me a minute. We can get her—if not her, then someone else—and I’ll have them over here in a jiffy.” He looked curiously toward the blue-coated police officer. “May I ask what happened?” he said.

The Parks System policeman held up the bunch of skeleton keys and smiled grimly. “Auto burglar with probably a stolen car knocked her out with a blackjack, Doc, and started to ransack the house. She evidently told him nobody was home, with regard to whatever pretext he came here for. That gave him his cue. The old time violent stuff is coming back, Doc; it always means hard times, like 1931 and 1932, are on the way.” He turned to the park laborer Corrigan who had tamped a short corncob pipe with coarse tobacco all during this three-sided colloquy, but who had remained quite silent. Pipe unlighted in mouth, Corrigan was patiently waiting to be of some importance again. “Didn’t get any of the digits in that license number, did you, Corrigan?”

The latter, pipe between stubby gnarled fingers, shook his head. “Not a wan, I’m sorry to say, O’Malley. I niver dhreamed th’ felly wit’ th’ goatee was a h’ister. All I know is thot his car was a bee-ooty, prob’ly a 10-cylinder Cyclops, an’ upholstered in a tony gray even to th’ cooshions, an’ wit’ that scarlet idgin’. He wur down an’ out o’ th’ place befure I yilled ‘Polace’ the sicond time.”

The doctor surveyed the scene in slightly puzzled silence, the faintest of corrugations in his brow, as though perhaps he dimly scented that interpretation by either of these two individuals were open to some criticism, but made no comment as one who found sufficient surgical and medical puzzles to face every day without encumbering his mind with criminological ones. Then, handing his card to the officer, he picked up his black case without any further words, and moved down the front steps. The traffic officer went back to his book and finished his data. “Miss Loris, eh? First name not known? I see—just moved in. Carr Halsey. Two R’s? And that was your room he tried to prowl first, eh? And you, Pat—Pat Corrigan witness. Dr. F. L. Anders, Diana Court Building, attending physician. Time of assault about half-past three. At least, Corrigan, it was 3:30½, by my police watch, when you called to me.” He made a few more notations and closed up his book. He jammed the bunch of skeleton keys down into the capacious side pocket of his blue coat. “I guess that’s all, Mr. Halsey. And you can go back to your weeding, Corrigan,” he added. “I’ll report this in full right away to the North Central Police Station on the old Fire Tower phone, and they can handle it. And I’ll turn over these keys to Squad Car 2887 when it next goes by.” He had half turned away from Halsey as he spoke, but turned undecidedly back to him again. “You’ll take care then, will you, of the matter of this young lady who was knocked out? Otherwise I’ll have to ring a hospital and—”

“I’ll take care of all that, Officer,” Halsey hastened to assure him. And even while he spoke he found himself filled with a disquieting sense of recrimination at the manner in which, in the fact of the doctor’s prediction of the extreme stupefying effects of this drug Myolpin, his own facetiously and privately expressed wish at a brief hour or less ago had been granted by Fate—his wish that the new guest of No. 810½, and No. 810½’s stern landlady, should not exchange any conversation whatever for a while yet. He spoke again, almost guiltily: “Just—just leave everything concerning the young lady in my hands, Officer. And I’ll stay here at least till the nurse shows up.”

A moment later the big hall door slammed behind the two men and the heavy brogans of the gardener and the equally heavy-soled polished leather boots of the traffic officer could be heard crunching in unison down the front steps. As for Halsey, left entirely alone now for the first time with his thoughts, his hand clutching the knob of the closed front door, he pondered no longer on the curious way in which his idle wish had been granted. His thoughts, indeed, centered now about far graver things. For he was beginning to realize the salient fact that there were two people in the universe who were trying very hard to get their hands on the bottle of Mazoru-Ikeuna. And one, it seemed, had not stopped short of murder to secure it!