The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “One tank of Ethine,” the first man said to Carson who was the first to the door.

  “Carry it down those cellar steps,” instructed Carson, pointing to the flight in question. “Then I’ll show you where to deposit it.”

  They lugged the cylinder downstairs and set it down at the point which Carson indicated, valve up. They came upstairs panting.

  “What charges are there?” Carson asked.

  “None,” said the spokesman of the pair. “Charged to a Dr. Byerly.” And mopping off their respective foreheads, they repaired back to the waiting taxicab and within a few seconds were off.

  Carson turned to Marcia. “Now, honey-girl, get that china painting outfit of yours, your palette, palette knife, ruler, and tubes of paint — including the old gold, and be in readiness to duplicate that trademark on the Amos Todd and Sons safe. Cary, suppose you and I put a few boards on the cellar steps and slide the man-trap upstairs at once so that Marcia can be working on it in the library while we’re installing the rest of the details. We’ll need chisels to cut those holes in the west wall of the room, and while you’re getting them from that assortment of tools you’ve got downstairs, I think Marcia could well hunt up some cheap calendars or lithographs to cover the holes up with. Incidentally, Marcia, we’ll have to spill a lot of plaster and I’m afraid you must resign yourself to the task of cleaning it up. Also — before I forget it — we’ll want a small rug on which the man-trap can stand — a rug through which we can cut a small round hole to carry the pipe connecting with the hollow leg. Marcia can also provide that. While you’re getting the chisels downstairs, Cary, better get a bunch of half-inch pipe connections, one right-angled elbow, and a stillson wrench.”

  And within two minutes the three young people had fallen to work with desperate willingness — a willingness on which much depended.

  Clear up until seven-thirty Carson, Cary and Marcia worked like beavers, and when at last they were finished with the installation the man-trap stood in the exact spot where the Amos Todd and Sons safe had reposed. While it appeared to rest with its weight alone upon the little rug which Marcia had brought downstairs from her bedroom, its connection with the floor was far more rigid, for a short stretch of pipe ran from its hollow leg, through an unobtrusive hole in the rug, and clear through the floor and the ceiling of the cellar below. There the steel tank of Ethine hung in slings of stout steel wire attached to hooks screwed in the rough rafters of the cellar, and to its threaded nozzle was coupled a short stretch of right-angled pipe which joined it up to the piece protruding downward from the ceiling. While they had worked furiously at this task, as well as the chiselling through the walls, Marcia had been working deftly at the face of the safe, first tracing the Amos Todd and Sons trademark, transferring the tracing bodily to the new safe, and then quickly filling in the letters with old gold and outlining them with a thin red line greyed with its complementary color to give it the appearance of age. A little manipulation of Cary’s blow-torch, held some distance off, produced a current of superheated air which first completely dried the duplicated trademark and then gave it a series of fine cracks which resembled nothing so much as the ravages of time. While the older safe with its slightly smaller combination dial remained in the room, one could perceive that the two were different; but as soon as Cary and Carson slid the Todd strongbox from the room and down into the cellar, the illusion was perfect. And when they turned out the lights and inspected it by the illumination of a match only, they realized that they had indeed created a substitution that should defy even the expert Kate Barwick.

  The holes which they had chiselled through the walls, and which cost a wealth of plaster and splinters, they now covered up with a calendar, a cheap oil painting which had been in the house when they came, and a lithograph which formerly had hung in the kitchen. After cutting in each one a small but perfectly good eyepiece, they were practically in readiness for the night’s strange experiment. But one thing more remained to do, and Cary himself expeditiously executed that. Attaching a foot vacuum-pump to the tiny valve protruding upward from the floor of the safe, he exhausted that entire system of hollow walls, leg and connecting pipes with five minutes of strenuous and puffing pumping. They did not attempt, on account of the non-lethal character of the gas employed, to seal up that tiny valve with lead, but merely closed the safe and opened the hand-valve downstairs attached to the cylinder of Ethine. A bumping — a rushing sound in the pipes — and they heard their hollow system fill up with the same gas that was held at high pressure in the cylinder.

  Now they were done. Marcia prepared a hasty little supper in the kitchen. They all ate in silence, each one busy with his own speculations as to how the man-trap would work with its non-lethal gas instead of the fatal hydrocyanic acid gas intended by its inventor.

  But as they neared the end of their little meal, the phone bell in the outer hall rang sharply. Marcia looked at Carson, and Carson looked at Cary, and Cary looked from one to the other. And it was Carson who spoke, his dessert spoon poised in midair. “The Barwick woman may be checking up. But you’d better answer it, Marcia. If it’s a strange voice, you can say ‘wrong number’ and hang up.”

  So Marcia hopped up from the table and went to the phone. In a second she came back, her face a little discomfited. “It’s — it’s Mr. Smock,” she said. “He was awfully arrogant — wanted to know the telephone number of that whippersnapper — he meant you, Cliff! — who was in to see him last Monday night. I told him that you were within a short distance of the phone and I’d call you.”

  Carson jumped up from the table. He went to the phone in the outer hall, and took up the receiver.

  “Clifford Carson talking,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, yes — my young friend, Mr. Carson, the brother and fiancé, I believe, of Miss Desmond?”

  “The same. What can I do for you, Mr. Smock?”

  “Not a thing in the world,” said that gentleman with an ill-concealed exultancy. “Except to congratulate mel I just wanted you to know that your little horning into my business affairs last Monday night — your knocking me out of that Whitlock Spayne Critchley and Evans sale — yes, the one I lost last Tuesday noon — hasn’t been worth anything to you. Surprised?”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Smock? Make it snappy. This family is very busy.”

  “Quite so. Well, my dear young beneficent intervener” — Carson would have sworn that the man had his receiver propped up somehow and was literally rubbing his hands together as he talked — ”it may be of great interest to you to know that Barry and Balky, the subdivision people, are going to take the Outer Ravenswood tract over in entirety in the morning for one hundred thousand dollars — cash down! — to make a bungalow town out of it — Barry and Balky’s Bungalow Town! The Title and Trust Company are bringing down title tonight, and the sale goes on record at the County Building tomorrow morning at nine twenty-five.”

  “Oh — I see. And — and why nine twenty-five, instead of nine twenty-six or nine twenty-four, ?r. Smock?”

  “Because, my dear young and most astute sir, probate court opens at nine fifteen, and the Henry Desmond legal declaration of death is the first proceeding scheduled up on the calendar. I am, my dear Mr. Carson, allowing only ten minutes for Judge Deviton’s court order and its recording by the court clerk.”

  “I see. Well then, Mr. Smock, I do congratulate you — for your talents in real estate operation as well as in your other interesting line of business. Anything else I can do tonight?”

  “Not a thing, Mr. — Mr. — Mr. Buttinsky.” The tone was venomous. “Except to think it over — think it over. And oh, yes — you can have the pleasure now of squaring yourself with your foster-brother and sister for advice costing them a thousand dollars apiece.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try to do that. And good-bye!” And waiting with all the poise and calmness he could muster for the other receiver to be deposited, Carson hung up and rejoined the little dinner, already at its end.r />
  “Well — he did it after all,” he declared, half admiringly. “Can you beat it? Not a chance in the world now for your father — even if he ever did come back — to save his rights. The old boy passes the tenure right out of his hands tomorrow the minute he gets legal possession himself — and your father hasn’t — or never had — a sit-in.” He dropped down into his vacated chair. “Lord, but Smock’s stinging sore because we stopped that Spayne Whitlock sale last Tuesday. If he had been actually dying tonight — he’d have taken pains to let us know he licked us.”

  “Well, Cliff,” said Marcia, with a half-philosophical, half-sad little smile, “I just think that so far as Smock and that Outer Ravens wood land went, we’ve — we’ve always been — well — licked. Now — oh dear! — if we’d only have taken that thousand dollars apiece, we’d — oh, forgive me, Cliff — ” she reached out and put her hand on his arm. “You did advise us for the best. We’re not angry — either of us. You’ve done everything you could. You couldn’t foresee this, nor that absurd blotter. You — ” She clapped her hands sharply together, peremptorily. “Let’s all forget Smock now. We’ve got serious things ahead tonight. We never did have a chance on Father’s share of the Outer Ravenswood property. But we have one real chance at this smaller money — this prize of Mr. van Twillingham’s.”

  And she rose from the table as a signal that lost causes and lost hopes should be forgotten.

  It was exactly nine o’clock when they turned out all the lights in the house, and Marcia, clad in a cloak and hood, and provided with an electric pocket torch from Cary’s multifold mechanical equipment, left the house and took up a position in the old building-materials shack across the street, instructed how to signal back the moment she should catch the flash of Kate Barwick’s signal from up the street. A half-hour passed, a long thirty minutes in which Carson and the younger man conversed in low tones, and then a splendid limousine with headlights agleam pulled up in front of the house, and Reggie van Twillingham, traveling bag in hand and gold cigarette-holder between his lips, stepped forth. Carson was out on the curb of the deserted street to greet him as he dismounted.

  “Now, James,” van Twillingham instructed the chauffeur, looking at his watch, “what you may possibly see or hear around here tonight is not for the papers. Understand? But I think we’ve been together long enough to know that, eh? Now run your machine a block over, douse your lights and stand dark. When I step out here and whistle through my fingers, throw on your lights and drive up. We go from here to the Jefferson Park station of the Northwestern railroad which I pointed out tonight on our way over. I don’t know when I’ll call you, but be ready to make a swift run if necessary. My train stops there for two minutes at twelve twenty. And we may possibly have to burn up the streets between here and there.”

  “I get you perfectly, Mr. van Twillingham,” said the driver, touching his cap. “I understand, sir. I’ll be waiting for your signal, sir.” And there was in the tone of his “sir” that deference which comes from much good money crossing the palm at frequent intervals.

  It was getting on late now, and they did not dare to light up the house to show van Twillingham the arrangement of the apparatus. Instead, the latter surveyed the safe carefully by an electric torch, and appeared to be very much satisfied by its harmless appearance. “And who would think,” he commented, “that it is nothing more nor less than a tank of high-pressure gas surrounding certain valuables and papers. Ingenious, by Jove. Ingenious, really.”

  The crunching sounds of the limousine wheels had long since faded away when the three men took up their position in the room next to the little improvised library. The only illumination now left to them was the semi-gloom of a leaden-grey sky, and they were forced to talk in the lowest of tones. The window of the room in which they were stationed gave just a view and no more of the materials shack across the street, and slightly to the right, where Marcia was ensconced, and upon this salient objective instead of on the adjoining dark library with its safe and its couch and its lithographs did they rivet their eyes.

  But no flash, either from the shack nor from far up the street, shone forth. Ten thirty came — ten forty-five — and this in turn was followed by eleven. Van Twillingham gazed nervously at the luminous dial of his watch in the gloom, and when eleven fifteen came a suffocating silence fell upon the three men. But one question could have been paramount in each one’s mind. Had Kate Barwick finally thrown up her plans to aid a supposedly innocent girl victim, as outlined to her by Casper Wolff? Or was she merely delayed by the caprices of the interurban electric system upon which she was to travel? And thus came eleven thirty. Came also eleven thirty-five. Came eleven forty. Then it was that van Twillingham’s voice sounded out in the room, no longer low, but in his usual tone. “Gentlemen, she isn’t coming. It’s as plain as the nose on one’s face. She’s chucked it. So there’s no use of my staying on. Perhaps when I come back from Honolulu or Japan, we’ll talk over this idea further — maybe experiment a bit. Frankly, I’m not so sure now that I want — ”

  But low, out of the dark night and far down the street, a tiny light flashed, and its momentary glow showed the form of a woman approaching along the sidewalk. Then it was gone. A second — and then like the twinkle of a star flashed back Marcia’s tiny light in her place of concealment across the street. Kate Barwick had come.

  The three men were tense now. A couple of minutes passed, and they heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel path that skirted the house. The footsteps stopped. The sound of a faint tapping on the swinging cellar window followed. Then the barely inaudible squeak of a pair of rusty hinges. Quiet. Then the sound of someone moving about downstairs. Ascending creaks of the cellar stairs marked the upward progress of the visitor from the night, then the squeak of the door which cut off those stairs from the hallway, a few footsteps, and then the opening of the door in the library. At once three eyes, each one belonging to a separate owner, glued themselves in the darkness to the three holes which focused upon that little room.

  The newcomer, still in darkness, closed tightly the door of the room in which she was to work. Then an electric torch suddenly bit the inky blackness of the room. To the three silent watchers the face of a woman in the late forties was revealed, her high cheek-bones painted with the garish rouge of the circus, her eyebrows thinned and blackened, two jet pendants swinging from the tips of her ears giving her an exotic, oriental appearance, belied hopelessly however by the simple serge suit with old-fashioned high-boned collar of black silk edged with lace, that but for the rouge and the general atmosphere of the circus which surrounded her would have marked her as a middle-aged school teacher. Thus did Kate Barwick unwittingly reveal to three onlookers but a few feet from her the form and features of Madame Mercedes, the Handcuff Queen.

  She passed one hand across the wealth of brown hair which the loss of youth had not taken from her. She stood in silence, pondering, thinking. Her beam of light first fastened itself upon the electric-light socket which hung midway from the ceiling, and then traveling about the lines of the wooden conduit rested upon the wall fixture which protruded over the old red couch. She evidently came to a decision, for reaching upward, her operations conducted only by the light of her pocket torch, she unscrewed from the hanging socket above her its bulb, and then half-stooping, half-kneeling, withdrew from a small leather satchel which thus far had remained in concealment, the plug of a thick black flexible cord which she screwed into the socket. A second later she raised from the case its contents which, passing the beam of light for a second, proved to be a powerful electric drill. Now she kneeled down, and fixing the button of her torch so that its light would play continuously on the safe in front of her, stood it at a proper distance. There was tense silence — a silence which suggested no living human being in the vicinity, rather than four such creatures. From her case the woman withdrew an ordinary wooden ruler, and with a pencil which sprang from nowhere she ruled off two diagonal lines on the flat kno
b of the combination dial. The intersection of these two lines evidently gave her the exact center of it, for she then measured downward a certain distance, and made a pencil-mark at some point which she seemed to reach by a process of both measurement and calculation. This done, she laid her ruler in a horizontal position on the safe door and very meticulously, very carefully, with super-caution almost, measured off a certain number of inches and fractions of an inch to the right, where she made a strong mark, wetting the pencil between her lips. Now she put her ruler and pencil away, and for possibly the space of a minute consulted what appeared to be some notes made in a tiny leather notebook which she took from a handbag which thus far had lain hidden in the shadow of the drill case. A second later the whir of the electric drill sounded forth, its point pressed firmly against the mark at whose location she had arrived with so much care, its low murmur the only sound in the intense stillness.

  For perhaps a minute and a half the drill continued its melodious hum. The beam of the electric torch riveted directly upon the field of operations showed a steady stream of fine grey-white iron granules trickling down the front of the safe, and the face of the operator close above it watching the progress with rapt, almost professional absorption.

  And then it came. The drill suddenly pushed in a full two inches as though it had encountered soft porous wood. It had, very obviously, entered the hollow interior that lay between the inner and outer walls of the door. And this was further proclaimed by the faint hissing sound — barely perceptible it was at that — which appeared to emanate from the region of the whirling shaft.

  Kate Barwick appeared to be puzzled. The eyes below the thinned and pencilled eyebrows riveted themselves curiously upon the drill. A click of a switch in its handle and the motor stopped revolving. She slowly withdrew it. And then — like the roaring ‘sizz’ of a giant cannon-cracker — like water thrown upon a red-hot plate — like the steam from an over-stressed boiler — the rush of high-pressure gas that shot from the aperture made the operator lean to one side of the safe in apprehension and utter surprise. But like a flash she seemed to gain an intuitive idea what to do to quell this phenomenon to which there could be no explanation. She thrust the point of her drill against the hole. She tried to jam it back in. But she could not accomplish this simple feat — the volume of gas hissing from the hole was too terrific in its speed and pressure to allow even the point of the drill to enter it. The heavy drill clattered to the floor, she flung herself forward, her eyes full of consternation, and tried desperately to press her thumb against the invisible flow. But useless, ineffectual. The gas literally sizzled from the ball of that digit like steam. Then it was too late. She rose halfway to her feet, she gave utterance to a strange choking noise, she swayed a moment in her position of neither up nor down, and then sank prone upon the floor.