Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels

by Stephen Leacock

  "They do," said Powers.

  "Separating, of course, the Ohuli counties from the Wazoo?"

  "Yes," said Powers.

  "Precisely; the thing is simplicity itself. And what contribution willthey make to the Imperial Exchequer?"

  "None."

  "And will they pay their own expenses?"

  "They refuse to."

  "Exactly. All this is plain sailing. Of course they must have aconstabulary. Lord Edward," continued the Premier, turning now to theSecretary of War, "how long will it take to send in a couple of hundredconstabulary? I think they'll expect it, you know. It's their right."

  "Let me see," said Lord Edward, calculating quickly, with militaryprecision, "sending them over the Barooda in buckets and then over themountains in baskets--I think in about two weeks."

  "Good," said the Premier. "Gentlemen, we shall meet the House to-morrow.Sir John, will you meantime draft us an annexation bill? And you, youngman, what you have done is really not half bad. His Majesty will see youto-morrow. I am glad that you are safe."

  "On my way home," said Powers, with quiet modesty, "I was attacked by alion----"

  "But you beat it off," said the Premier. "Exactly. Good night."

  CHAPTER V

  It was on the following afternoon that Sir John Elphinspoon presentedthe Wazoo Annexation Bill to a crowded and breathless House.

  Those who know the House of Commons know that it has its moods. At timesit is grave, earnest, thoughtful. At other times it is swept withemotion which comes at it in waves. Or at times, again, it just seems tosit there as if it were stuffed.

  But all agreed that they had never seen the House so hushed as when SirJohn Elphinspoon presented his Bill for the Annexation of Wazuchistan.And when at the close of a splendid peroration he turned to pay agraceful compliment to the man who had saved the nation, and thunderedforth to the delighted ears of his listeners--

  _Arma virumque cano Wazoo qui primus ab oris_,

  and then, with the words "England, England," still on his lips, fellover backwards and was carried out on a stretcher, the House broke intowild and unrestrained applause.

  CHAPTER VI

  The next day Sir Perriton Powers--for the King had knighted him afterbreakfast--stood again in the conservatory of the house in CarltonTerrace.

  "I have come for my reward," he said. "Do I get it?"

  "You do," said Angela.

  Sir Perriton clasped her in his arms.

  "On my way home," he said, "I was attacked by a lion. I tried to beatit----"

  "Hush, dearest," she whispered, "let me take you to father."

  IV

  WHO DO YOU THINK DID IT?

  OR, THE MIXED-UP MURDER MYSTERY

  (_Done after the very latest fashion in this sort of thing_)

  _IV.--Who Do You Think Did It? or, The Mixed-Up Murder Mystery._

  _NOTE.--Any reader who guesses correctly who did it is entitled (in allfairness) to a beautiful gold watch and chain._

  CHAPTER I

  HE DINED WITH ME LAST NIGHT

  The afternoon edition of the _Metropolitan Planet_ was going to press.Five thousand copies a minute were reeling off its giant cylinders. Asquare acre of paper was passing through its presses every hour. In thehuge _Planet_ building, which dominated Broadway, employes, compositors,reporters, advertisers, surged to and fro. Placed in a single line(only, of course, they wouldn't be likely to consent to it) they wouldhave reached across Manhattan Island. Placed in two lines, they wouldprobably have reached twice as far. Arranged in a procession they wouldhave taken an hour in passing a saloon: easily that.

  In the whole vast building all was uproar. Telephones, megaphones andgramophones were ringing throughout the building. Elevators flew up anddown, stopping nowhere.

  Only in one place was quiet--namely, in the room where sat the big manon whose capacious intellect the whole organization depended.

  Masterman Throgton, the general manager of the _Planet_, was a man inmiddle life. There was something in his massive frame which suggestedmassiveness, and a certain quality in the poise of his great head whichindicated a balanced intellect. His face was impenetrable and hisexpression imponderable.

  The big chief was sitting in his swivel chair with ink all round him.Through this man's great brain passed all the threads and filaments thatheld the news of a continent. Snap one, and the whole continent wouldstop.

  At the moment when our story opens (there was no sense in opening itsooner), a written message had just been handed in.

  The Chief read it. He seemed to grasp its contents in a flash.

  "Good God!" he exclaimed. It was the strongest expression that thissolid, self-contained, semi-detached man ever allowed himself. Anythingstronger would have seemed too near to profanity. "Good God!" herepeated, "Kivas Kelly murdered! In his own home! Why, he dined with melast night! I drove him home!"

  For a brief moment the big man remained plunged in thought. But withThrogton the moment of musing was short. His instinct was to act.

  "You may go," he said to the messenger. Then he seized the telephonethat stood beside him (this man could telephone almost without stoppingthinking) and spoke into it in quiet, measured tones, without wasting aword.

  "Hullo, operator! Put me through to two, two, two, two, two. Is thattwo, two, two, two, two? Hullo, two, two, two, two, two; I wantTransome Kent. Kent speaking? Kent, this is Throgton speaking. Kent, amurder has been committed at the Kelly residence, Riverside Drive. Iwant you to go and cover it. Get it all. Don't spare expense. The_Planet_ is behind you. Have you got car-fare? Right."

  In another moment the big chief had turned round in his swivel chair (atleast forty degrees) and was reading telegraphic despatches fromJerusalem. That was the way he did things.

  CHAPTER II

  I MUST SAVE HER LIFE

  Within a few minutes Transome Kent had leapt into a car (a surface car)and was speeding north towards Riverside Drive with the full power ofthe car. As he passed uptown a newsboy was already calling, "Club ManMurdered! Another Club Man Murdered!" Carelessly throwing a cent to theboy, Kent purchased a paper and read the brief notice of the tragedy.

  Kivas Kelly, a well-known club man and _bon vivant_, had been found deadin his residence on Riverside Drive, with every indication--or, atleast, with a whole lot of indications--of murder. The unhappy club manhad been found, fully dressed in his evening clothes, lying on his backon the floor of the billiard-room, with his feet stuck up on the edge ofthe table. A narrow black scarf, presumably his evening tie, was twistedtightly about his neck by means of a billiard cue inserted in it. Therewas a quiet smile upon his face. He had apparently died fromstrangulation. A couple of bullet-holes passed through his body, one oneach side, but they went out again. His suspenders were burst at theback. His hands were folded across his chest. One of them still held awhite billiard ball. There was no sign of a struggle or of anydisturbance in the room. A square piece of cloth was missing from thevictim's dinner jacket.

  In its editorial columns the same paper discussed the more generalaspects of the murder. This, it said, was the third club man murdered inthe last fortnight. While not taking an alarmist view, the paper feltthat the killing of club men had got to stop. There was a limit, areasonable limit, to everything. Why should a club man be killed? Itmight be asked, why should a club man live? But this was hardly to thepoint. They do live. After all, to be fair, what does a club man ask ofsociety? Not much. Merely wine, women and singing. Why not let him havethem? Is it fair to kill him? Does the gain to literature outweigh thesocial wrong? The writer estimated that at the rate of killing now goingon the club men would be all destroyed in another generation. Somethingshould be done to conserve them.

  Transome Kent was not a detective. He was a reporter. After sweepingeverything at Harvard in front of him, and then behind him, he hadjoined the staff of the _Planet_ two months before. His rise had beenphenomenal. In his first week of work he had unravelled a mystery, inhis second he
had unearthed a packing scandal which had poisoned thefood of the entire nation for ten years, and in his third he hadpitilessly exposed some of the best and most respectable people in themetropolis. Kent's work on the _Planet_ consisted now almost exclusivelyof unravelling and unearthing, and it was natural that the managershould turn to him.

  The mansion was a handsome sandstone residence, standing in its owngrounds. On Kent's arrival he found that the police had already drawn acordon around it with cords. Groups of morbid curiosity-seekers hungabout it in twos and threes, some of them in fours and fives. Policemenwere leaning against the fence in all directions. They wore that baffledlook so common to the detective force of the metropolis. "It seems tome," remarked one of them to the man beside him, "that there is aninexorable chain of logic about this that I am unable to follow." "So doI," said the other.

  The Chief Inspector of the Detective Department, a large, heavy-lookingman, was standing beside a gate-post. He nodded gloomily to TransomeKent.

  "Are you baffled, Edwards?" asked Kent.

  "Baffled again, Mr. Kent," said the Inspector, with a sob in his voice."I thought I could have solved this one, but I can't."

  He passed a handkerchief across his eyes.

  "Have a cigar, Chief," said Kent, "and let me hear what the trouble is."

  The Inspector brightened. Like all policemen, he was simply crazy overcigars. "All right, Mr. Kent," he said, "wait till I chase away themorbid curiosity-seekers."

  He threw a stick at them.

  "Now, then," continued Kent, "what about tracks, footmarks? Had youthought of them?"

  "Yes, first thing. The whole lawn is covered with them, all stampeddown. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with awooden leg"--Kent nodded--"in all probability a sailor, newly landedfrom Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistletied round his belt."

  "Yes, I see that," said Kent thoughtfully. "The weight of the whistleweighs him down a little on the right side."

  "Do you think, Mr. Kent, a sailor from Java with a wooden leg wouldcommit a murder like this?" asked the Inspector eagerly. "Would he doit?"

  "He would," said the Investigator. "They generally do--as soon as theyland."

  The Inspector nodded. "And look at these marks here, Mr. Kent. Yourecognize them, surely--those are the footsteps of a bar-keeper out ofemployment, waiting for the eighteenth amendment to pass away. See howdeeply they sink in----"

  "Yes," said Kent, "he'd commit murder."

  "There are lots more," continued the Inspector, "but they're no good.The morbid curiosity-seekers were walking all over this place while wewere drawing the cordon round it."

  "Stop a bit," said Kent, pausing to think a moment. "What aboutthumb-prints?"

  "Thumb-prints," said the Inspector. "Don't mention them. The house isfull of them."

  "Any thumb-prints of Italians with that peculiar incurvature of the ballof the thumb that denotes a Sicilian brigand?"

  "There were three of those," said Inspector Edwards gloomily. "No, Mr.Kent, the thumb stuff is no good."

  Kent thought again.

  "Inspector," he said, "what about mysterious women? Have you seen anyaround?"

  "Four went by this morning," said the Inspector, "one at eleven-thirty,one at twelve-thirty, and two together at one-thirty. At least," headded sadly, "I think they were mysterious. All women look mysterious tome."

  "I must try in another direction," said Kent. "Let me reconstruct thewhole thing. I must weave a chain of analysis. Kivas Kelly was abachelor, was he not?"

  "He was. He lived alone here."

  "Very good, I suppose he had in his employ a butler who had been withhim for twenty years----"

  Edwards nodded.

  "I suppose you've arrested him?"

  "At once," said the Inspector. "We always arrest the butler, Mr. Kent.They expect it. In fact, this man, Williams, gave himself up at once."

  "And let me see," continued the Investigator. "I presume there was ahousekeeper who lived on the top floor, and who had been stone deaf forten years?"

  "Precisely."

  "She had heard nothing during the murder?"

  "Not a thing. But this may have been on account of her deafness."

  "True, true," murmured Kent. "And I suppose there was a coachman, athoroughly reliable man, who lived with his wife at the back of thehouse----"

  "But who had taken his wife over to see a relation on the night of themurder, and who did not return until an advanced hour. Mr. Kent, we'vebeen all over that. There's nothing in it."

  "Were there any other persons belonging to the establishment?"

  "There was Mr. Kelly's stenographer, Alice Delary, but she only came inthe mornings."

  "Have you seen her?" asked Kent eagerly. "What is she like?"

  "I have seen her," said the Inspector. "She's a looloo."

  "Ha," said Kent, "a looloo!" The two men looked into one another's eyes.

  "Yes," repeated Edwards thoughtfully, "a peach."

  A sudden swift flash of intuition, an inspiration, leapt into the youngreporter's brain.

  This girl, this peach, at all hazards he must save her life.

  CHAPTER III

  I MUST BUY A BOOK ON BILLIARDS

  Kent turned to the Inspector. "Take me into the house," he said. Edwardsled the way. The interior of the handsome mansion seemed undisturbed. "Isee no sign of a struggle here," said Kent.

  "No," answered the Inspector gloomily. "We can find no sign of astruggle anywhere. But, then, we never do."

  He opened for the moment the door of the stately drawing-room. "No signof a struggle there," he said. The closed blinds, the draped furniture,the covered piano, the muffled chandelier, showed absolutely no sign ofa struggle.

  "Come upstairs to the billiard-room," said Edwards. "The body has beenremoved for the inquest, but nothing else is disturbed."

  They went upstairs. On the second floor was the billiard-room, with agreat English table in the centre of it. But Kent had at once dashedacross to the window, an exclamation on his lips. "Ha! ha!" he said,"what have we here?"

  The Inspector shook his head quietly. "The window," he said in amonotonous, almost sing-song tone, "has apparently been opened from theoutside, the sash being lifted with some kind of a sharp instrument. Thedust on the sill outside has been disturbed as if by a man ofextraordinary agility lying on his stomach----Don't bother about that,Mr. Kent. It's _always_ there."

  "True," said Kent. Then he cast his eyes upward, and again aninvoluntary exclamation broke from him. "Did you see that trap-door?" heasked.

  "We did," said Edwards. "The dust around the rim has been disturbed. Thetrap opens into the hollow of the roof. A man of extraordinary dexteritymight open the trap with a billiard cue, throw up a fine manila rope,climb up the rope and lie there on his stomach.

  "No use," continued the Inspector. "For the matter of that, look at thishuge old-fashioned fireplace. A man of extraordinary precocity couldclimb up the chimney. Or this dumb-waiter on a pulley, for servingdrinks, leading down into the maids' quarters. A man of extremeindelicacy might ride up and down in it."

  "Stop a minute," said Kent. "What is the meaning of that hat?"

  A light gossamer hat, gay with flowers, hung on a peg at the side of theroom.

  "We thought of that," said Edwards, "and we have left it there. Whoevercomes for that hat has had a hand in the mystery. We think----"

  But Transome Kent was no longer listening. He had seized the edge of thebilliard table.

  "Look, look!" he cried eagerly. "The clue to the mystery! The positionsof the billiard balls! The white ball in the very centre of the table,and the red just standing on the verge of the end pocket! What does itmean, Edwards, what does it mean?"

  He had grasped Edwards by the arm and was peering into his face.

  "I don't know," said the Inspector. "I don't play billiards."

  "Neither do I," said Kent, "but I can find out. Quick! The nearestbook-store.
I must buy a book on billiards."

  With a wave of the arm, Kent vanished.

  The Inspector stood for a moment in thought.

  "Gone!" he murmured to himself (it was his habit to murmur all reallyimportant speeches aloud to himself). "Now, why did Throgton telephoneto me to put a watch on Kent? Ten dollars a day to shadow him! Why?"

  CHAPTER IV

  THAT IS NOT BILLIARD CHALK

  Meantime at the _Planet_ office Masterman Throgton was putting on hiscoat to go home.

  "Excuse me, sir," said an employe, "there's a lot of green billiardchalk on your sleeve."

  Throgton turned and looked the man full in the eye.

  "That is not billiard chalk," he said, "it is face powder."

  Saying which this big, imperturbable, self-contained man stepped intothe elevator and went to the ground floor in one drop.

  CHAPTER V

  HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?

  The inquest upon the body of Kivas Kelly was held upon the followingday. Far from offering any solution of what had now become anunfathomable mystery, it only made it deeper still. The medicaltestimony, though given by the most distinguished consulting expert ofthe city, was entirely inconclusive. The body, the expert testified,showed evident marks of violence. There was a distinct lesion of theoesophagus and a decided excoriation of the fibula. The mesodenum wasgibbous. There was a certain quantity of flab in the binomium and theproscenium was wide open.