The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “And also that slip of paper you spoke of,” he added for her, “certainly makes it look as though someone was in this house last night while it was empty.” He paused thinking. “And nothing of this nature, I presume, Marcia, has ever happened since old Professor Jones, your Grandfather’s friend of his teaching days, left him the house?”

  “No, Cliff. Not during the three years we’ve lived in it have we had any trouble in the way of housebreaking.”

  He nodded, and turning away from the window spoke. “Now suppose we go in and see this slip of paper you speak about.”

  So together they repaired back in the house. From a desk in the hallway she took a slip of manilla paper one edge of which was rough where part of it had been torn away. She handed it to him. In the light from the halldoor he inspected it carefully. The printed words, “Chicago Public Library,” with the words in smaller print beneath them, “General Reading Room,” met his eyes. Still below this on a blank line was a number pencilled in soft, very black pencil, K 1990; and next to it, on the same line, evidently written by a different and harder pencil, was the hastily scrawled word “Out.” Carson looked up.

  “So you found this nearly underneath the safe?” he asked. “Does Cary or Grandfather ever go to the Public Library Reading Room?”

  “Cary never, so far as I know,” Marcia told him. “Grandfather occasionally went down there when he had a chance to write up a little nature article for extra money. But the point is, Cliff, that I swept this room carefully yesterday. I know I did not overlook this slip.”

  “Did you use a carpet sweeper, a broom, or a vacuum cleaner?” he queried.

  “A broom,” she said wonderingly. “Why do you ask?”

  “Carpet sweepers — also vacuum cleaners,” he replied with a smile, “sometimes drop pieces they have taken up weeks before. But I daresay you know that as well as I.” He paused, studying the torn slip of paper. “Well, we have here half of a printed reading-room slip from the public library. We have also the evidence that somebody endeavored to draw out a book whose number was K 1990, but that the book was out. Who that somebody is we don’t know because the lower half of the slip bearing the lines in which the drawer writes his name and address has been torn off. Now my venture, Marcia, is that a piece of paper was required to note down the name and number of this safe, the supposed mechanism of which had just been outlined in a few words and demonstrated with a pencil, and that somebody tore off half of this slip, which happened to be in one of their pockets, to use for the notation. The other half got dropped on the floor in the discussion, and here it is. But, unfortunately, the half that was used — the same half that was carried away again — is the half we require.”

  He studied the slip for a moment. “And yet, honey-girl, I wonder if after all this isn’t all we need?” He turned to her. “Did you ever try to get a non-fiction book at the library, the slip for which came back to you marked ‘out,’ without trying to draw another one along the same lines? I never did, particularly in the case of a non-fiction book such as this one is as denoted by the classification K. By golly, I’ll do it!”

  He folded up the fractional slip and put it carefully away in his pocket. “Agamemnon Church, a friend of mine, is assistant librarian at the Public Library and if anybody can get any data or records, I think I’m the one who can do it. Now, little girl, go to bed and get your sleep. If anybody were here — if anybody intends to come back again — that person or persons know your movements far better than you know them yourself. They’ll not come so long as you’re in the house, you may bank upon that. So go to sleep with perfect assurance.”

  At the front door he kissed her on her moist warm red lips and, clasping her slim little form in his arms, took his departure. By means of changing over from the surface line to the elevated road as soon as he reached the intersection, he managed to reach the thundering Loop considerably ahead of the time the trip would have taken on the surface alone.

  Arriving at the big stone building on Randolph and Michigan he went at once to the information desk in the large tessellated room on the third floor, used for drawing out books for home consumption. “Can you tell me the general classification of this number?” he asked.

  The young man addressed looked at it through hornshell glasses. “That’s natural history,” he said promptly. “Let’s see.” He ran through a series of bound typed sheets of paper. “This particular number would range around reptiles, snakes, turtles and crawling animals.”

  This was getting somewhere; so Carson made his way to the floor above and down a long marble corridor to the card catalogue room, where he lost no time in examining the indexed drawer which contained the heading “Snakes.” Sure enough, among the nine or ten books devoted directly to reptiles, he came upon the same number as that on the slip in his pocket — ? 1990 — and found that its full title was “Reptiles of the World,” with colored plates, by Horatio Griscomb; and that it was published by Ward Lock and Company, Salisbury Square, London, England. Now he was becoming what in the old parlor game was known as “warm”! If he had had any doubts thus far that someone interested in the Zuri snake of Mr. Jake Jennings, now locked fast at detective headquarters, had been in the St. Giles Lane house, they were completely swept away. And he almost knew instinctively that if that someone had at some time previous been trying to get a book or some technical information about Zuri snakes, and had found the most likely book, this one by Horatio Griscomb, out, the person whoever it might be would hardly have stopped the search without examining some of the volumes which were not out.

  So he copied down meticulously on the back of a letter taken from his pocket the titles of the remaining eight books devoted to snakes and reptiles. His copied list ran:

  K 3015 Catalogue of the Colubridae Snakes. Adolph Guenther.

  K 8046 The Ophidians. The zoological arrangement of the different genera. S. Higgins.

  K 6709 Researches on the venom of the Rattlesnake and the Cobra, with colored plates of all the poisonous reptiles of the world. Mitchell.

  K 4446 How to distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous reptiles by the shape of the head and nostrils. Illustrated. Adrian Le Veaux.

  K 1992 The Reptiles of India. Colored plates. Vanmouth.

  K 1993 The Reptiles of Africa. Colored plates. Vanmouth.

  K 1994 The Reptiles of Australia. Colored plates. Vanmouth.

  K 1995 The Reptiles of America. Work begun by father and completed by son. Colored plates. Vanmouth, Senior and Junior.

  Armed by this battery of numbers belonging to books devoted to snakes, Carson went downstairs at once to the offices of Agamemnon Church, his friend the assistant librarian. Greetings with the long lean cadaverous-looking custodian of the books, whose eye nevertheless reflected a quite unacademic twinkle, were soon over and Carson went straight to the task in hand.

  “Ag, I’m trying to get a line on someone who has been referring to books of a certain classification. I want an order from you letting me see the Reading Room slips put in yesterday, the day before, and even before that if necessary.”

  “So — ho,” remarked Agamemnon Church, “and the recently appointed Government Investigator for Fraudulent Mining Stocks is about to make his first capture, eh? All right, old investigator. Our Miss Minerva Wentley-Brown, up in the Reading Room, will give you access to whatever you want.” And he handed Carson a scrawled order.

  So upstairs to the fifth floor Carson went again, the joy of the chase in his blood like the scent of the prey in the nostrils of a fox hound. He received from Miss Minerva Wentley-Brown, a staid-looking spinster in stiffly starched shirtwaist who surveyed the order from her superior over her round eyeglasses with marked disapprobation, a bulky packet of tied-up manilla slips all stamped “Returned” in red ink, together with the hour of the return, and all arranged, as he was very shortly to find, in alphabetical and numerical order according to the classification of the first book on each slip.

  “These are yeste
rday’s,” Miss Minerva Wentley-Brown informed him. “You may have the day previous to this if you do not find what you require.”

  Carson took the slips over to one of the nearby tables and proceeded to examine them carefully one by one. Thus he was engaged from about ten-thirty to ten-forty-five when suddenly he came upon two slips close to each other. One called for number ? 1992 on the list he had made out, and one for number ? 3015 on the same list. Each bore at the bottom the name of one Casper Wolff. Each bore below that name, the address 525 Wabasha Street.

  At first glance Carson concluded fatuously that he had unearthed a vital clue, a Wabash Avenue street number in the big city of Chicago. But the word “street” instead of “avenue” was written plainly after the name of the thoroughfare, and what was perhaps more disconcerting was the fact that the final “a” of the word “Wabasha” was written so plainly that it could not be assumed to be a slip of the pencil. Wabasha Street it was and not at all Wabash Avenue. Now he was fairly certain that Chicago boasted no such thoroughfare, but to make doubly sure he went over to the information counter, secured a street guide and corroborated this fact. And there he paused to reflect. It was plain that somebody — one Casper Wolff — by the automatic action of his subconscious mind had jotted down on the library slip his address in a city other than Chicago. So now to find where Wabasha Street was.

  There was no catalogue by which to find in what city one of America’s millions of streets was located, but Carson had in mind a logical method which he was almost certain would provide the answer. That method hinged about the fact that yearly thousands of small business entrepreneurs, sparsely supplied with that vital thing imagination, opened up thousands of precarious little businesses which for want of a better name they called by the street on which they thrived or failed to thrive. Was there ever a Main Street that did not have its Main Street Confectionery, its Main Street Shoe Repair Shop, its Main Street Fruit Market and various other prosaic combinations? Armed with which reasoning Carson went to the civics room adjoining, where telephone directories and city directories of every metropolis in America were to be found. He started in with the big cities at first, and within ten minutes a grey-backed telephone directory in his hand bearing the title “St. Paul — Minneapolis, Minnesota,” gave forth in the W’s of its St. Paul section the names of a Wabasha Street Confectionery, a Wabasha Street Shoe Repair Shop — and wonders of wonders for the infallible system — a Wabasha Street Fruit Market! So Wabasha Street was in St. Paul.

  This was enough. The piecing together of facts was now considerably easier than it had been. Casper Wolff of 525 Wabasha Street, St. Paul, had made a trip to Chicago, had investigated the subject of snakes at the public library and had been on St. Giles Lane the night just passed. Now all that remained was to find out who Casper Wolff might be. This proved to be the simplest of all. In the same directory which gave him the Wabasha Street Confectionery and various other business enterprises gracing the name of the street whereon they were located, he turned to the Wo’s instead of the Wa’s, and there found the entry: Casper Wolff, atty., 525 Wabasha Street.

  He was done so far as his work in the library went. Replacing the telephone directory on the rack, Carson left the library thinking deeply. He did not go back to his own office but wended his way instead to that occupied by Ramsey Gordon, the ever-genial Ramsey Gordon who appeared more willing to do work for others than to attend to his own. He found him in, and closeted with him, he went straight to the point.

  “Mr. Gordon, do you know anyone in the legal business in St. Paul?”

  “Sure do,” was Gordon’s reply. “Jim Goddard, Sam Stillman, George Barron. Also a few others. What can I do for you?”

  “I wonder if you could get me a speedy telegraphic report, confidential of course, and as complete as possible, on one Casper Wolff, an attorney in St. Paul listed at 525 Wabasha Street?”

  Ramsey Gordon took out a yellow telegraph blank from one of the pigeonholes of his desk. He wrote on it in flowing hand:

  Mr. Sam Stillman, Ryan Building, St. Paul, Minn.

  Telegraph me immediately and confidentially what you can find out about Casper Wolff, lawyer, of

  Ramsey Gordon.

  “Now fill in the data you just gave me, Mr. Carson,” he smiled through his even white teeth, “and we’ll get this off without delay.”

  Carson wrote in quickly the full address he had obtained through his peregrinations through the marble halls of the public library. Gordon called his stenographer. “Send this at once, Mary,” he ordered. He turned to Carson. “I’ll send the answer over to you by my office boy as soon as it comes in,” he added. “And if Sam Stillman, who knows everybody in St. Paul, is in town, you can bank on it he’ll write the report as soon as he gets this wire,”

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE TRIBE OF GALIOTO PAY A CALL

  AFTER leaving Gordon’s offices, Carson went back to his own, his mind full of a haze of conflicting thoughts, in which the unsolved Henry Desmond problem on one hand and the enigma of Henry Desmond’s remittance of a twenty thousand dollar gold note, battled for ascendancy with a puzzle with which it had no connection, namely Mr. Jennings’ Zuri snake and Casper Wolff who entered other people’s houses in the dead of night.

  But he was destined to receive information touching upon the Henry Desmond phase of the affair, and not very satisfying information at that. He had not been in his office over thirty minutes before the phone bell rang and he answered it. His stenographer was out.

  “This is Wiswell of the Hartford Building speaking,” came a voice which Carson recognized at once as the energetic red-haired investigator whom he had hired to comb the printing cases of Hammond, Indiana.

  “Now I’ve made a most thorough investigation on that job you assigned me,” Wiswell went on after assuring himself that Carson himself was on the wire, “and I’m unable to locate the type case from which that piece of printing you showed me was set. I will say, Mr. Carson, that I’ve combed Hammond, Indiana, to a fareyouwell. I went to every printing house listed in the place, and also a few more of the fly-by-night type that didn’t happen to be in the directories, and in each instance I got a good glazed print of all the E’s, O’s, and F’s in their cases, or from type faces cast in molds in their shops — that is, of the particular font and size from which your specimen was printed, of course. Told ‘em the sheet containing those E’s, O’s, and F’s was for a new game I was getting out where the players had to detect the difference between type faces of the same letter, font and size. Well, to cut a long story short, I’ve examined every E, O, and F among about three thousand individual letters I obtained, and in no case did I find the exact defects in the type that correspond to those on the enlarged photograph I took of your specimen last Monday.” He paused. “Now anything further I can do, or shall I bill you for my time and the costs of the proofs and send them over to you? I’ve marked each proof with the name of the shop from which it came.”

  Carson pondered deeply, his forehead drawn in a painful frown. “For the present just keep them there, Mr. Wiswell. I may have to go further into this thing with you. Suppose I ring you later on the matter after I see one or two other parties related to the case.” And with a few brief words of leave-taking, he hung up.

  He leaned back in his swivel chair somewhat heavy-hearted at the manner in which his scheme for tracing Henry Desmond had fallen down. But this should not have been surprising, he reflected, for after all the plan had been based purely on a hypothesis centering around the postmark on the typewritten envelope: namely, that the glazed blotter-receptacle had been printed as well as mailed in the town of Hammond, Indiana. And from it no clue had been forthcoming. What to do now? Henry Desmond must be located. Would it be of advantage to hire Wiswell to comb the printing shops of Gary, Indiana; of East Chicago, Indiana; of Whiting, Indiana, all industrial towns adjoining Hammond? He had about decided to ring Wiswell back without further delay and set him to covering the entire fiel
d of towns lying in the lake tip of Indiana, when his stenographer appeared, with her hat on.

  “I beg pardon, Mr. Carson, but there’s an Italian woman — a whole group of Italian people waiting outside in the hall to see you.”

  Mrs. Galioto!

  He had forgotten all about her!

  Instantly he dismissed from his mind the Henry Desmond dilemma, and turned and smiled reassuringly at the girl’s troubled face. “Just send her — or them — in, Miss Webster. And then run on to lunch.” And he prepared to greet his visitors.

  The assemblage that was ushered into the tiny office a second later by the stenographer, on the eve of her departure, comprised evidently the results of a family council. Mrs. Galioto herself, tiny and slim and scarcely more than forty years in age at best, was dressed in black silk shirtwaist and equally black silk skirt, matching in their ebony hue her glistening jet hair which was done on each side of her head in snug “biscuits,” strikingly set off by the two shining gold rings that pierced her dainty ears. Shrewd black eyes looked out from Mrs. Galioto’s olive-tinted oval face, with its first suggestion of the chin line of middle age, and she was followed by a huge man who strangely resembled her very much except that he looked exactly like a Sicilian bandit out of the movies. He might have been fifty-five or sixty, but about him was the panther-like Strength of youth and the cunning of the ignorant. Dressed in corduroy trousers and flannel shirt, his own blue-black hair, mottled with grey, stuck up on his head like the quills of a porcupine, and his own ears, pierced by two huge glistening gold rings, showed plainly that he had not been in America very long. A suspicious bulge in his huge broad belt, underneath the blue flannel shirt, indicated that he had not long since lived in the Sicilian mountains where each man is the law unto himself providing he backs up that law with a well sharpened knife. Following him came a tired-looking woman of thirty-five or so, lugging a tiny puling infant, a woman whose sagging face showed the lines that came from stewing over a frying pan for many, many children. At the heels of this procession came Mr. Joe Allenuza, bulging in his clothes as before, with the tightly-fastened lower button of his coat cutting his body squarely into two well-stuffed sausages, but clad this time in reddish-tan instead of grey; at his heels trotted, diffidently, the boy whom Carson had once before met, Tony Galioto, a youngster of fifteen or so, with olive-tinted thin face, the face of an artist, especially with its black eyes.