CHAPTER XLVII

A String and Two Thumbtacks

Halsey gazed sadly at the other.

“As a story it’s a story. ‘Live,’ I suppose you call it, dealing with things of today; and not just a scandal tale, like the Orski story—which you say is an ‘iced’ yarn—dealing as it does with things over and finished nearly four decades back. Although Orski’s beating it when gangdom was after Tatrelli makes that a mighty live one, too, Artemus. Don’t forget that! And how you ever expect ultimately to spring the two stories separate from each other is too much for—” He paused moodily. “Well, as I say, your Mexican head spy yarn is a live story. But as a solution of my difficulties, it doesn’t seem to be anything. All I know—or care about—is that I’m on the track of one Clifford X. Hemingway—trying to determine his present whereabouts. And I’m no nearer to those whereabouts than when I started. My uncle’s ads and broadcasts for Wisconsin-U graduates weren’t answered. The card I got from the Jap gave no information beyond the name. The Jap handed me out nothing but lies. Wen Proctor’s dying accusation was smudged out, so far as practical purposes went. And I’m still left hunting Clifford X. Hemingway—to make $90,000—or to lose it if I don’t find him in time—or something slips, and the other outfit finds him first. Damn it, man, you’re getting a fistful of stories! Me, I’m getting nowhere. Now if Orski had died under the wheels of that train at Englewood Depot, I might assume I had a chance of some sort on that Zell Process sale, as originally drafted out. But he raved that he’d left orders with his head man to carry on. And the fellow will do just that. And atop of that, Orski, when he comes out from under this shock in a couple of days, will be more bitter and vindictive than ever. And he’ll need money, too, more than ever—to attract young ladies—him with cork legs!”

Baxter laughed: “Oh yes, a gel has to have a half-dozen fur coats for associating with a elderly gent with cork legs! Of course. Of course.” His facetiousness faded, and he became a bit more sympathetic in attitude. “Yes, Halse, you’ve got a personal problem quite aside from the mystery element of this case—and the international angle. A problem that affects your whole life—since it determines whether you’ll work on a salary or a free lance’s pittances for the rest of your days or own a snug fortune in stocks and bonds bringing you a cold hundred dollars a week in interest alone. But please remember that if your Jap had gotten away from this house without my learning his destination, you’d not have had anything but the police on which to hang your hopes. And for some unaccountable reason, they appear to be beautifully blocked. With all their teletypes, telegraphs, police radios, news broadcasts, newspaper pictures, boarding-house and rooming-house canvassings, private reward offers, they’re just getting nowhere, absolutely nowhere. I never saw the beat of that, confound it; at least not for years.” Baxter paused a bare second. “That blast of publicity can constitute one reason why the Jap lied to you about that card. If Proctor’s body had lain undiscovered till this morning—if there were no hue and cry after Clifford X. Hemingway—it’s barely possible that he might have ponied out the information. But murder was out—and information was cut off pronto. There are ten other possible reasons, though, also, why the Jap lied to you this morning. No use even to try and enumerate ’em. But he did lie. And we know where the gentleman hangs out. We’re not beaten. Damn it, Halse, come out of it. You’ve taken a sudden slump. It’s just beginning to dawn on you, in the way a death in the family dawns some twenty-four hours after on those left behind, that you’ve a fortune trembling in the air—and you’re getting suddenly into a funk. You’ve taken a slump, I tell you. I can see it. Why, your Hemingway is tangled up in this affair just as much as Frantzius, Sumiko, Miss Loris, McCollum. We’re headed right for some bulls-eye. The solution of this supposed Frantzius-‘McCollum’—brother of ‘Bloody Juan’—business is a solution of your Hemingway problem.”

“Oh—yes?” said Halsey morosely, “Not if those who know everything continue to play ignorant. As the Jap did.” He paused. “Artemus, do you suppose that Hemingway could be, at this moment, tied up, a prisoner out at that Keegan Road farmhouse? If so, we ought to have that place raided at—”

“At once?” Baxter smiled. “No, Halse, your theory of a tied-up Hemingway fits this situation, in which the police have been blocked, somewhat well, but I think he’s a free agent, wherever he is. If he were tied up, though, don’t forget that the first signs of a raid might result in his being killed off promptly. To shut his mouth. Two people were in that Bush Bourse laboratory. One is the killer, one a potential witness under state’s evidence. And besides that—we don’t know what’s back of this whole thing. But the point that I’m trying to get at is this, if Clifford Hemingway were suddenly bumped off, your chance at that $90,000 is up the flue. For he holds indisputable title to that 2-percent stock as I understand it. But with him dead—good Lord, man!—you’d have a fine chance, with less than a week to go, to locate his heirs, much less muddle your way through a long year of probate. No, Halse, we mustn’t muff anything that can kill off that money of yours.”

“Good enough,” said Halsey, relieved. “I pass. I see you’re with me after all. I thought that all you were thinking of was trying to deliver the completed goods to Vinegar and Paprika. The way you so-well like to do.” He paused. “Well, so long as you say you’ve got Duffy at the bureau fixed, I suppose I may as well be patient—and play—just as you play. So be it. What now? So Frantzius-McCollum is probably head spider for ‘Bloody Juan’s’ U.S.A. intelligence service, not incorporated? Wonder what Hemingway is?”

Both men were silent for a moment. Halsey felt his psychological slump, which Baxter had so shrewdly perceived, passing, as all such things do. Perhaps the latent newspaperman’s instinct existing in a mere newspaper special sports writer was beginning to come to the front. But suddenly he asked:

“Artemus, this half-Heinie, half-Spic, Frantzius, had a technical education, eh? Electrical?”

“Yes. So O’Reilly reads on the Federal card. Up on ether waves and wireless transmission, as it used to was, 25 years ago!”

“Well, he’s probably just as much up on it today. Hm! Artemus, there’s things forming in my mind now—things that you just naturally can’t know anything about. Artemus, wait till I get a number here. I want to find out something.”

He looked up a number in his phone book. He dialed it. “Electrical Manufacturers’ Temple? Put me in connection with Hall No. 457—I haven’t the specific number of the parties leasing it.” He paused. Then he spoke again. “Hullo? Is this Mr. Braisted speaking?”

The pleasantly modulated assent of his uncle’s high priced optical and transmission engineer came to Halsey over the wire.

“This is Halsey, Mr. Braisted—no, not Roger Carr—who was with you early yesterday afternoon when we got that little impromptu scene from the Regent Theatre, London.”

“Oh yes. Glad to see you again, Mr. Halsey. What can I do for you now?”

“Mr. Braisted, I want some deep technical information. And about the only man in Chicago who can give it to me is you, too. Here it is. Do you remember all that stuff you explained to me about how the Master Pulsator at Nippiginic River Station, Canada, which could be swung through a total of 270 degrees of arc, starts co-pulsing with—”

“—with either the fixed co-pulsator on the roof of the Clarendon Square Hotel, London, or the one on the roof of the L’Equitable Building at Paris? Yes. And establishes an invisible ‘ether stress’ beam?”

“Yes. Well what I want to know specifically, Mr. Braisted, is whether two Master Pulsators could establish the same sort of conductive stress between ’em?”

“Why of course they could,” said Braisted emphatically. “Synchro=half-wave length dephased pulsations would set up between two Masters as well as between a ‘Master’ and a ‘Co.’ But it’s never done nor even has to be done, you know. There are only two such systems in existence, for the letters-patent are leased to quite different companies, with entirely different ownership, so much so, Mr. Halsey, that when the Canadian one, connecting Canada with London and Paris, released its U.SA. business into the U.S.A. through the Western Union Telegraph Lines, the other company, connecting Mexico with Melbourne and Cape Town, selected the rival Postal Telegraph Service for its agent.”

“Well, I think I understand that. Especially in view of there being no license in America for ether-stress beams. But to get back to the purely theoretical question—you see, I’ve a technical man in my room here who knows all about the old Goldschmidt alternator which preceded the triode transmitting oscillator—what would have to be done to set up co-pulsing between two movable master pulsators?”

“Why, the operators would simply throw the power switches at each end—at about the same agreed time—with the two pulsators approximately facing each other across space, except that each would be swung out to the uttermost right hand extent of—say—an approximate 40-degree arc of travel. The operators would then bring the pulsators slowly through their arcs of swing in opposite directions. If they failed to ‘catch,’ as it’s called, they would start back again over the same arcs. They would keep on reversing this way just a few times. The moment a tube of ionized mercury-vapor held in the front of each master pulsator—or, in fact, just one alone—broke into a glow—that would mean their networks were not only exactly facing each other across space but were pulsing in synchronism, or rather half-wave-length-dephased synchronism, as we ought really to call it.”

“I thank you, Mr. Braisted. I think that’s all I wanted to know. I’m going to jump hard on a would-be technical expert now!” And Halsey hung up.

He turned to Baxter.

“Artemus, I had to make of you a smart aleck technician to camouflage my line of questioning. As a matter of fact, you probably don’t know your head from a hole in the ground on the higher degrees of this stuff. But now I’m going to ask you a question where you might have some worthwhile opinions, a question in—well—racial psychology. Do you think an Indian—no, I don’t mean one of these so-called dirty ‘Injuns’ in a blanket on a reservation—but a highly-educated Indian, who’d seen Europe, met with white people at least in its technical schools—ever gets really ‘white’ in his sympathies or allegiances? That is, do you think he could be ‘fixed,’ to the extent where he wouldn’t particularly be on the up-and-up with the white man?”

“Yes, I do. Most emphatically. And he could be specially ‘fixed’ by somebody with color—but I swear I don’t get: you.”

“Well, you feel, quite evidently, that a North American Indian would be pretty friendly toward someone with aboriginal American blood in him, like a Mex, and not particularly loyal to His Majesty, the King, or Uncle Sam, and the latter’s white neutrality?”

“Gosh, of course, Halse. Specially if the palm of his red hand was crossed, or he was put on a little private payroll of some sort. Mazuma and similar blood—why, he wouldn’t even consider the Great White Race. But you’re getting too deep for me, Halse. Who is the Injun?”

“He’s a technically trained Indian named George White-Otter, a Cree out of the Algonquian stock. Works for a certain Canadian company. In fact he’s the high muck-a-muck up in the wilds where he commands a bunch of other equally Indian porters.”

“Well, well! Czecho-Slovakia hasn’t come in this yet, but I see Poor Lo enters! Oh yes, Halse, I know Lo wasn’t the poor Indian’s name in the famous poem. But we’ll call him Lo. What’s this all about?”

“It’s about nothing until I get a large, very large map of North America.”

“Then come with me to my room on Dearborn Avenue. I have just such a map hanging on my wall.”

“I’ll have to,” groaned Halsey impatiently. He rose with alacrity. Then suddenly he shook his head: “Nope, won’t do, Artemus. Won’t do at all. A map, Artemus, is a Mercator’s projection; a distorted unbent depictment upon a plane surface of part of the surface of a sphere. The lines of longitude, you’ll recall, on a map, are all parallel, instead of converging as on a sphere. And the pole, therefore, which is only a point, is as wide as the equator! A map can be fairly correct for distances, but not at all for true spatial and lineal relationships, at least if 3 points are involved. And I’m not interested in distances.”

“Well, we’ll get a 10-cent paper globe somewhere.”

“A globe? Yes. That’s what I must have, Artemus. Yes. A globe. But not a 10-cent globe with only about 20 big cities shown on it. And paper segments all pasted up inaccurately. I must have a damn big globe. A true globe, too. A—I’ve got it! Say, I know I’m getting uselessly deep, but wait till I get those two thumbtacks out of that beautiful poster over there advertising the International Ski Meet, and a ball of thin white cotton twine—then I want you to go upstairs with me and visit a nice old gentleman named Daladier.”

“All right.”

Halsey plucked the two thumbtacks from the purple and green poster in question, and obtaining the nucleus, at least, of that ball of white string, motioned Baxter out. The latter, frankly puzzled, followed. Halsey led the way up the stairs, clear to the fourth floor. He sniffed oddly as he knocked at the door of a rear chamber. It was opened, finally, but only a suspiciously long time after he had knocked. An old gentleman with long white locks and smooth face, but very ruddy cheeks, wearing a cape coat—he had evidently not even doffed it yet after coming in off the street—stood in the doorway. At the further end of his large room, near the windows, stood his great masterpiece, which Halsey knew had had to be lowered down through the opened skylight of the room adjoining—and thence through the locked folding doors leading from that chamber into this. It was a gigantic globe of papier-mâché, fully 8 feet in diameter, machine tooled to perfect sphericity, lovingly smoothed with emery paper, hand tinted as well, in a hundred colors, and meticulously lettered over the greater part of its surface with thousands of dots and names, some in English, some in French. Although, to be sure, a fortieth or thereabouts of the globe, corresponding to a part of North East China and a part of Southeast Siberia, was as yet untinted, as yet untouched by a lettering pen. On its massive foundry-cast iron pedestal, the globe stood nearly to the ceiling of the room; but it worked on a tempered, unbendable steel axle whose jewel-set pivots were encased within a machined copper ring sliding within oiled grooved arms extending up from the iron base, so that the enormous globe could be swung or revolved in any direction, so as to bring the Sahara Desert of Fridtjolf Nansen’s Land under one’s scrutiny.

“Monsieur Daladier, I wish to introduce Mr. Baxter, a newspaperman on my paper.”

“Pleeze, sair, to meet you,” said Monsieur Daladier, questioningly.

“Monsieur, I want to request a small favor of you. I wish to take advantage of that remarkable globe of yours, which you showed me some time back, and whose surface—or rather the delineations appearing on it—you assured me had been meticulously transferred to it by calipers, dividers and pantographs, from smaller globes. To do so, however, I will have to stick two thumbtacks in it.”

“T’um tacks? You weez to steeck t’um tacks in my globe, sair?” The old man drew himself up to his full height. His pink cheeks glowed with indignation, “I can no’ permit zat. Nevaire, sair! Not so much like—like a needle can you steeck in. T’um tacks. Ha!”

“Listen, Monsieur, I’ve got to. And you’ve got to let me. You—you can plug up the holes with cement—or with chewing gum. But I’ve got to.”

“You ’ave got to? Ha! Nevaire, sair. You ’ave insolt me. I spen’ my life making ze great globe zat go maybe in ze Smizzonian Institoot—an’ you would steeck pins, needles, nails, spikes, daggers in heem. W’y—I ’ave work on zat globe weez brosh an’ pen, for years an’ years—sinze ze Great War has made all ze new contrees. Le diable! You—you ’ave insolt my work.”

“You won’t do it?” said Halsey, lips tightening.

“Certainement not, sair. Certainement not.”

Halsey brushed suddenly past the old gentleman, and into the room, where, jerking back a green curtain covering a recessed niche in the wall, he displayed a small coffee pot simmering on an electric plate.

“Monsieur, you will let me do what I ask.” With a padded 10-cent store hand protector hanging near the pot, he seized it and brought it forth—in full view. “You are caught, Monsieur—making coffee in your room—and you know the penalty!”

The old man grew apoplectic: “I am caught, sair, am I? Ho—I—I am caught, I am? Well, sair, I am beg to tell you zat Madam Morely she ’ave geev me ze permizzion to make ze leetle bit of coffee on my leetle elactric plate.”

Now it was Halsey’s turn to fall back aghast, coffee pot sagging in hand. Baxter was regarding the entire scene, half in amusement and half in helpless bewilderment.

“You—you—you—” stammered Halsey, “have permission—permission—to make coffee—in your room?”

The millennium had come! Or else he was stark, raving mad.

“I ’ave, sair,” said the old gentleman in the cape coat.

“I—I don’t believe it,” said Halsey. “It—it can’t be.”

“Sair, you ’ave insolt me wonce too mach, You weel appológize—else do I shallenge you to ze dool, weez anny wappons. I—I shallenge you right now.”

“Wait! Do you mean I can go downstairs—bring Mrs. Morely up—”

“I bring ’er up myself—right now—I prove you. Zen—zen I shallenge you.”

“Too much,” moaned Halsey. “The world is coming to an end.” He leaned against the wall. At length he said, friendlily, “I apologize, Monsieur—about the coffee. About everything. I extend my deepest apologies.” The old gentleman was thawing just a bit. “May I ask,” Halsey queried helplessly, “er—may I ask, Monsieur—how—how you ever put it over? Mrs. Morely—”

“You may ask, sair. Monsieur Daladier has nozzing to hide. W’y I can make coffee, eh? Well—I am say nize zings about ’Oolysses. Madam Morely—she zink very moch from ’Oolysses. She—”

“Ha ha!” said Halsey melodramatically. “A great light dawns upon me! Monsieur, you are going to let me stick thumbtacks all over your globe—yet I’m only going to put in two. I—”

“You ’ave again insolt. Again I shallenge—”

“To hell with your challenge, Monsieur. Now, hist. This is for our ears.” He motioned Baxter in. He closed the door quietly. “Monsieur, you may thank me for the privilege of making coffee in your room. But if I speak—your coffee pot and you—you, Monsieur—go out of this place—forever.”

“W’at—w’at you mean.” The old man was staggered.

“Because ’twas I who translated Captain Kidd’s dulcet words which he picked up from you—about our monstrously beautiful Ulysses, ‘dear feline,’ whose magnificent fur you wished to stroke. Monsieur, Captain Kidd said, ‘Monstre bornge, a peu pres je te mourtrie.’ Monsieur, I have helped you out all I intend to now. I am going down and tell Mrs. Morely the truth, that you said: ‘You one-eyed monster, I would like to murder you!’”

“Mon Dieu!” said Monsieur Daladier weakly. He leaned against the wall, one clawlike hand plucking at his heart. “I am los’. My bootiful room, w’at I lov’ so moch. Sair, I wizdraw my shallange. I—I am—an old man. Have mercy, sair. Have—”

“Monsieur, I won’t say a confounded word. But you’re lost if I do. You’ve insulted Ulysses. That’s—that’s a thousand times worse than any insult you may think I’ve given you. Let me stick just two thumbtacks in your globe—and that’s all I ever want of it.”

The old gentleman stood aside: “Stick zem in, eef you weel. ’Way, far in. I—I can plug up zem holes. Stick zem in. I—I say nozzing. I—I am desólate.”

“Thanks, Monsieur. We won’t be long.” He motioned to Baxter. Monsieur Daladier, utterly overwhelmed, had sunk into a chair. Halsey smiled in his direction. “Pour yourself a demitasse, Monsieur, and calm your nerves. The secret lies between us, forever more. But don’t give vent to your feelings in front of old Cap Kidd downstairs. Come, Artemus.”

Crossing the room, and standing in front of the huge globe, Halsey whirled it around until Canada stood uppermost. He screwed up his eyes and ranged around wildly with his finger. “Ah, here it is,” he said suddenly. “Nippiginic River Station. Found by sheer luck, nothing but! Monsieur, you have a very fine globe. Is it accurate?”

“You ’ave insolt me ag—no, Monsieur. I pledge my life on ’eez accooracy.”

“Good.” Halsey made a tiny slip-noose in his white twine. He stuck a thumbtack halfway in the globe, its point crunching in exactly at the little dot marked ‘Nippiginic River Station.’ He hooked the slip-noose around the shaft of the thumbtack and drew the noose tight. “Hold this string, Artemus. The world is going to move now.”

He moved the great globe about, on its axis a bit, on its slip-ring considerably. Now Mexico was uppermost. He had a hard time now. “Monsieur, where in the devil would St. Bonafacie, Mexico, be? It’s—it’s in the hands of the Revolutionists.”

“I care nozzing about zat revo’lu’zion,” said the old man contemptuously. “Onnly won revoluzione ever zere was: ze Frenz Revoluzione. But St. Bonafacio? You look so close, sair, to San Barbara. Or Monchevillo, eef you can fin’ Monchevillo.” The old man obviously knew his geography.

“Ah—here it is! St. Bonafacio, Mexico—held tight by the Mexican Revolutionists. Now—now my heart’s in my mouth.” Halsey thrust a thumbtack halfway into St. Bonafacio. Three quarters in, in fact. “Now, Artemus, hand me the end of that string—sure, the whole ball. And while I draw it tight around the shaft of this thumbtack, I want you to straighten out the string itself all along its entire path so that it lies flat and tight.”

“You mean,” said Baxter, “so that it covers the shortest distance—between the two thumbtacks?”

“Yes.” Halsey drew the string fairly tight about the tack. Baxter went along it and adjusted it. That is, he plucked it a bit, like a violin string, and at several of the pluckings Halsey drew it even tighter. At last, after several of those pluckings, it lay snug and fast on the surface of the great globe. Tense. Unmovable in any direction. Unslidable. Halsey wound it, then, tautly around the thumbtack, broke off the ball with several inches to spare, and passed the loose end under, and around the tightened portion, rendering the whole thing self-holding entirely.

He sighed: “Artemus, I—I haven’t the heart to look. I’ve been too interested—in your story. Will you gaze at the globe somewhere around Chicago and tell me where yon string passes? I’ll look out of the window in the meantime—and reflect on my deficiency of newspaperman’s blood.”

“Gladly.” Baxter turned the globe slightly, and scrutinized the spot that was Chicago and which, on such a large globe, must have been an area at least an inch square. “Well, my son, the string passeth not over Chicago proper. But over the Western outskirts of her. I would say—ah—now here’s a little patch marked La Rive and—”

“Zat mean Reeverside,” put in the old man from his chair. “Ver’ preety town. So I put ’eem down in Frenz!”

“Well, then it passes over the globe just two hairs’ west of this town of Riverside, even a hair west of some undulating worm marked Desplaines River!”

“The gods of your newspaperman’s luck be thanked,” said Halsey fervently. He approached the globe. He looked down. It was as Baxter had stated, He stood staring at it. “Well—that’s all, I guess.” He was removing the thumbtacks—the string: “Farewell, Monsieur. Never again shall we trouble your globe. Now go back to your coffee.”

The old man conducted them out with a deep bow. He was still a bit huffed, but very much more frightened. Halsey led the way downstairs to his room. He let Baxter in, and closed the door.

“Well, Artemus, I, a poor sportswriter, have contributed to thee a little more on this case than thou harkest! I can tell you now why McCollum—if he really is Frantzius, and is therefore the Intelligence Service chief in the U.S.A. of his brother, or rather half-brother, ‘Bloody Juan’—rented the Keegan farm.”