The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  His auditor was a girl of about nineteen who sat in his room dressed for outdoors in a gaudy hat with pink roses, a rather flamboyant orange dress front, a patent leather belt with a great brass buckle, and a cheap serge jacket and skirt. Her bobbed hair was a silky brown, however, and her face was the smooth, pink-cheeked countenance of what might make one think of a mountain girl. Her eyes carried a sort of dull animal look; neither education nor intelligence could be seen to be her strong points. She listened to Casper Wolff’s reading of the article aloud with her mouth slightly open, and equally wide-open eyes which showed the struggle of a somewhat immature brain to comprehend and successfully classify the details brought out in it.

  At his conclusion, he tossed the paper down and wrinkled up his slightly yellow brow in a puzzled frown.

  “Talk about luck, Lola,” he said. “Can you beat it, my girl? Here we come on to Chicago figuring that the Zuri must surely be here, planning on advertising for it and maybe locating it if luck ran our way, and — slap bang! — our quest is at an end. We run square up against the exact location of the blamed snake. Luck, eh, girlie?”

  Into the girl’s animal-like eyes came a sort of dazed look. “O’ course — o’ course it be the same one, don’t it, Mr. Wolff?”

  “The same one?” he echoed. “Why of course it is. Caught by a nigger in the yards of the Union Station. There you have it. For those are the yards our train came in, don’t you know? Or didn’t you realize that?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, I — I don’t know where our train come in. I don’t hardly even know where at is this hotel.” Her eyes grew savage and hard. “I o’ny know I’d give ever’thing I got to pay Jake back for all what he’s did to me.”

  “Well now is your time, girlie,” said the man Wolff. “With Jake locked up over at Chicago detective headquarters everything is going fine for us. Soon’s I saw that little item in this morning’s Tribune about Jake being locked up, I knew he’d be tied under pretty stiff bonds if he was Cal Buckman. In fact I called up detective headquarters this morning while you were eating breakfast, and inquired his bail. Ten thousand iron men he’s under, Lo.” The man Wolff paused. “Let me ask you two things, girlie. Did Jake ever speak of his earlier Chicago days? For instance did he ever mention the name of Cal Buckman?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, Mr. Wolff. Jake’s been about Chicago afore he met me, but he didn’t never speak of no Cal Buckman.”

  “Just what did he have to say about Chicago?”

  “Well, he said that Chicago was one burg in the U. S. A. where he didn’t have not a friend.”

  “Good!” said Casper Wolff decidedly. “Jake Jennings is due to lie behind bars for several days now. And if anybody ought to know that, I guess I ought to, eh, Lola?”

  “You know ever’thing, Mr. Wolff,” said the girl confidently, which was an odd remark for such a pretty, well-made, healthy girl to make.

  There was silence between the two of them for a moment. Then Lola spoke.

  “What we going to do now, Mr. Wolff?” It was plain that she personally was quite lost in the maze of the problem, and that the man was handling all the reins of the affair.

  Casper Wolff made no reply. He paced up and down the floor for a moment. Finally he spoke. “There ought to be a way for us in this thing. Beyond doubt Jake has put it over on these people out on St. Giles Lane in some manner — he’s slipped them a wad of coin, and they’ve pulled the chestnut out of the fire for him. I can easily see why the much-wanted Cal Buckman couldn’t afford to be interviewed by any reporters on this snake ad.” He shrugged his shoulder. “And he got picked up after all in spite of his precautions.” He turned to the girl. “About how much money did he have, Lola?”

  “Not very much,” said the girl slowly. “About a hunderd dollars — so he done said — and that Chinee ring what he always wore on his hand. That ring was his copatil.”

  “His capital, girlie. Capital, not copatil.”

  “Cap-it-tal,” she repeated slowly.

  “And just how much was that ring worth?” asked Wolff. “No guesswork now. Tell me just what he said about that. He told me all about it that time he came to see me concerning you — but my memory for sums of money is sometimes very deceptive. Wasn’t it worth about — ”

  “He usta say,” she interrupted, “that he could allus pawn it in a white man’s pawnshop for a hunderd and twenty-fi’ dollars, however much that be, and in a Chineyman’s pawnshop for just twicet that. That’d be — how much would that be, Mr. Wolff?” She did not wait for an answer to this highly intricate mathematical problem, but went on, her words pouring impulsively from her. “He said, Mr. Wolff, he said a ring was allus fall money for a grifter, but that ‘un was double-fall money in any burg that spouted a Chineyman’s-town.”

  “Fall money for a grifter is right,” sneered Wolff. “And he’s using his fall money for gambling on the snake.”

  “Why, Mister Wolff, would a Chineyman lend him bigger more dollars on that there ring than a white man? Chineymen are very bad men. I saw one once in the drammar. Don’t you love drammar, Mr. Wolff? I do. The Chineyman’s name in this drammar was Mister Fu somethin’. That’s the way I cotched it in my ear. And oh — was he bad! Why he p’isened people, and killed ‘em, and locked ‘em in rooms and laughed at ‘em. He was — he was just awful. And he had long mustishes. Oh — you’d a-been scairt to death of him, Mr. Wolff, if you’d seed him. All Chineymen are very bad, bean’t they, Mr. Wolff?”

  “Lord no, child. You’ve been drinking in Sax Rohmer’s ‘Fu Manchu,’ that’s all. The Chinese are a super-race. They are more patient, persevering, trustworthy, frugal, hard-working and last but far from least, honest, than any white man who ever walked in two shoes. Just a bit inclined to accept blindly certain supersti — well, by that word, Lola, I mean beliefs. Beliefs that have no foundation. See?”

  She wrinkled up her brow as though trying very hard to digest this recondite analysis of the Oriental mind. But she sighed at length, as though it were far too deep for her. Then, womanlike, she reverted to her original question.

  “But why, Mister Wolff, would a Chineyman — a Uncle, like in most burgs is one o’ them Jewishers with three gold balloons in front of his store — one of them kinda Chineymen lend him twicet as much money on his ring?”

  He sighed, like a young father who has to combat daily, hourly, the growing curiosity of a youthful expanding mind of a six-year-old hopeful.

  “Well, Lo, I’ll try to convey it to you — but I don’t know whether you’ll grasp it, with your moving-picture conceptions of the Yellow Race. We’ll see, though, whether we can bring you ‘round.” He paused. “As I told you, of course, Jake happened to relate to me all the interesting facts about that ring when he came to see me that time. I had a jade Buddha that I’d picked up at an auction — so naturally we fell into conversation. My Buddha — ”

  “I had a boy-friend oncet named Bud,” she commented. “Gee — he was the freckledest feller ever in my life I seed.”

  He made an impatient gesture. “Buddha — not Bud. Buddha was a very wise man — yes, a Chineyman, as you call him, who was born thousands of miles west of here, ‘way over on the other side of a big enormous pond of water called the Pacific Ocean. This was hundreds of years ago. And he became a sort of god to these Chineymen, as you term them.” He paused. “Anyway, it seems that Jake was in the psychopathic detention hospital in San Francisco eight or ten years ago — that’s a hospital, child, where they send people who aren’t just right up here.” He tapped his forehead significantly. “Jake had been drinking heavily — and had the D.T.’s. That’s something where the man sees pink elephants and — ”

  “They ain’t no sech thing as a pink elephant,” she averred indignantly. “They’re colored just like — like mouses.”

  “Mice,” he corrected. “No, Lola, there aren’t any pink elephants, to be sure. But I daresay nobody would have been able to convince Jake about that time
that there weren’t! Well anyway, as he explained it, there was a Chinaman in that hospital too, with paresis.” He tapped his forehead again. “That’s, Lola, where you get all soft inside here. And you think — ”

  “Just a ord’nary crazy man,” she offered.

  “Correct,” he said relieved. “Crazy. And he thought Jake was a man named Mr. Confucius. Mr. Confucius was also a very wise Chineyman. Wiser and finer than any white man. Not bad like that Mr. Fu you saw in the drama!” He paused a moment. “And this old Chinaman had this ring secreted somewhere in his clothes — the hospital people had overlooked it — and he demanded that Jake, who he thought was Mr. Confucius, should accept it as a gift. Which of course Jake did. For you know Jake! He was clear enough in his own head about this time to be glad to get a nice little flat square diamond like that, all free of charge. And so Jake had it ever after.

  “He investigated it after he got out of the detention hospital,” Wolff went on patiently. “He took it to a high-up Chineyman that he knew. And he learned that he had a — what the devil did he call it? — a Ling-Cha ring. Something like that anyway. It seems, Lola, that another very wise old Chinese doctor about a hundred years or so back, in Pekin — ”

  “I’ve been there,” she cried.

  “You’ve been there?” he retorted, thunderstruck. Then he laughed. “Yes, I guess you have. With the outfit. Pekin, Illinois. Well, this Pekin was over on the other side of the earth, right underneath us, where the people walk with their feet towards us, and their heads down, and — ”

  “Why, Mr. Wolff — they couldn’t! They’d fall right off.”

  “Well,” he said hurriedly, “they don’t because they use a sort of glue on their shoes. They call the glue — well — gravity. Yes, it comes in long tubes.” He mopped off his brow with a white silk handkerchief, and went resolutely on. “And so this wise old medical doctor, Dr. Tung, finding the doctoring profession not very remunerative, founded a little jewelry-making establishment, where he made — ”

  “Oh ho ho!” she laughed triumphantly. She pointed a finger at him in playful scorn. “Now I know you ain’t never been to school, nuther, Mr. Wolff. ‘Course me I ain’t. But you ain’t nuther, either.”

  “Why,” he said amazed, “of course I’ve been to school. Why do you say that, Lola?”

  “Cause you said this Chiney doc ‘founded’ a little something, or other. That ain’t right, Mr. Wolff. A lady taught me all about that. You sh’d say he ‘found’ whatever ‘twas he found.”

  He grimaced. “Well, my dear, grammar is as strange as — as well — drammar! Let’s say the old Chinese doctor established or set up a little jewelry-making establishment where he made Chinese jewelry calculated to correct different ailments in the wearers. In fact, he prospered so, that he retired wealthy in a few years and became a mandarin. He — ”

  “There ‘uz a man with the outfit,” she cried, “that c’d play on two mandarins at the same time. He’d toss one in the air, while tuther was on his knee.”

  “I see,” he said solemnly and sadly. “Well, this old Chinese doctor didn’t become a mandolin. A mandarin. But let that pass. Among the many things he produced in his medico-manufacturing shops were several thousand of these Ling-Cha rings — calculated, guaranteed, and warranted to enable any woman who was expecting in due course to conceive a child to conceive a boy child, and a boy child only. You see, Lo, the Chinese want boys, and all they can get of them. Girls aren’t worth anything to them. Over on the inland rivers of China, they even used to drown their girl-babies, they were such a — well — drug on the market! And in addition to that, boys will worship their ancestors — that’s their granddaddies and great granddaddies — ”

  “I got a great-granddaddy,” she put in. “And a great grandmammy, too. My great grandmammy is a hunderd-and-two years old and smokes a pipe.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about her,” he put in drily. “Anyway, these rings, any one of which came to be known colloquially as The Ring of Seven-and-Seventy Sons, turned out to be actually efficacious in making Chinese women produce sons. Statistics — figures, see? — records — showed that in eighty-one percent of — er — pregnancies, boys were produced. It appears now however, Lola, from the recent researches of a famous professor of biology in the University of Vienna that while there’s no such thing as actual prenatal influence, a woman’s confidence in the outcome of her — er — pregnancy, whether she be confident of her prospective offspring’s being a boy or confident of its being a girl, acts as a partial sex determiner to the embryo in the early stages, tending strongly to produce the masculine form by the time it reaches the foetal stage. It’s due to alteration in the chemistry of the mother’s blood, due in turn to the secretions of her ductless glands, involved with her emotional life. But this, I know, is all over your head. All right. But now you’ve got the explanation of exactly what you asked. The Chinese have such a profound belief in the efficacy of these rings in affecting embryological development adventitiously to their — their psychology — that is, the predilections of their race for male progeny — that the rings possess a higher value by at least twice in Chinese circles. A higher selling value, Lola. And therefore a higher loaning value. Their jewelers and pawnbrokers are very expert in identifying them as the identical ones put out by old Dr. Tung’s factory in Pekin.” Wolff paused. “And oh yes — this Dr. Tung incorporated some sort of a hand-carved inscription on the outer surface of the band of the ring which stated conclusively that if a Ling-Cha ring were ever pledged, it belonged, by the ruling of its original maker, to the pledgee forever if not redeemed promptly by a certain number of changes of the moon. It might seem that he was figuring to expand the whole male population of China by this expedient, but I’m inclined to believe that he saw that it must make the rings far more pledgeable, therefore more negotiable, and therefore more salable when they left his shops. Anyway, so Jake explained it to me, it was always pledged under that law — the Law of Ching Chang Cheng, or some outlandish thing — and the borrower had to get around in time with his money or the Chinese Uncle would say ‘No give. No got. He b’long me.’ “ He paused. “How much of all this have you got now? Nothing I’ll warrant.

  “Well I think Chineymen are very bad men,” she reiterated emphatically. “They kill people with pizens. I know. I saw them in the drammar.”

  “The power of the screen!” he groaned. He made a helpless gesture with his two hands. “Well, after all, all that concerns us is that Jake probably raised the maximum coin he could on his ring — and played for the snake. So now to get back to brass tacks and to figure out what our next move is.”

  He continued to pace up and down for several moments. Finally he put on his hat. “I think the first thing I’ll do is to take a run out to St. Giles Lane and look over the land. From there I think I’ll come back to the public library of this town and see if I can get any dope of any value on. tiger snakes. Yes, that’s what I’ll do this morning.” He turned to the girl. “Now, girlie, suppose you run over to that squawky across the street — at least that’s what we used to call ‘em when they first came out a few years ago — it’s, going full blast even at this hour of the morning, I see — and get your fill of that screen play, whatever it is, while I’m gone.” He stepped to the tall old-fashioned window with its dusty, stained, yellow lace curtains and peered down on the street below. A moving picture talkie of the cheapest and most ancient type was running across the way, a lugubrious cashier with chin in hand sitting in the ticket-seller’s glazed-in box. A small boy with a cap was paying a coin down. The lithographs plastered on the walls and the boards in front showed the film to be: “The second series of The Perils of Ava the Aviatrix.”

  “Goody,” said the girl Lola, as she surveyed over Casper Wolff’s shoulder the scene pointed out by him. “Jake never would go to drammar. Oh, how I love drammar, Mr. Wolff. It’s so — so grand.”

  The upshot of the discussion was that Casper Wolff took the girl across the street
and deposited her in the dark recesses of the theatre in which the perils of Ava, the Aviatrix, were being both visibly and phonically ground out, and himself chartered a yellow taxicab. In considerably less than one hour later by his watch he was out on St. Giles Lane. He walked past the house whose number was given in the Herald-Examiner story. The shades were all drawn in front. He marked its position of comparative isolation, surrounded by vacant lots and empty land broken only by subdivision signs and makeshift fences. Its distance from the nearest carline, by which, to save another taxi bill such as he had just paid, he intended to return to his hotel, he calculated appraisingly in his mind. This done, he trudged along the new cement sidewalk until he came to another house, fully a block and a half beyond it, which like No. 5720 St. Giles Lane stood alone amid much vacant land. He went up the steps and rang the bell, and when a matronly-looking woman came he asked if she could tell him anything about Professor Angus Desmond who lived at No. 5720 St. Giles Lane, and particularly where Professor Desmond’s office was.

  “La me,” ejaculated the woman. “Old Professor Desmond ain’t got no office. He’s an old, old man, nigh onto eighty. He lives alone with his granddaughter, Marcia, whose daddy is dead. I was over there the other morning, and she told me old Mr. Desmond was in Havana, Cuba.”

  Wolff’s face fell — but it was merely a piece of acting. “That’s too bad,” he ruminated aloud. “I wanted to consult him upon something. What time do you suppose I would find Miss Marcia in?”