The Man with the Crimson Box

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Well,” she said, “he looked into its nose aperture—after another Negro had told him about the old case and this brewery; for this fellow, Mr. Vann, had been in South America back 10—13 years ago—and knew quite nothing. And he found where bone had been cleared away inside—on the right side. Where—as he put it—’de li’l shingle didn’ hang down lak as on de odder side.’ ”

  “Capital!” Vann commented. “A 10-strike—for the State’s Attorney’s office. And what else?”

  “Well, he knew that it was a young man because it had practically all of its teeth, upper and lower.”

  “Ah—our Senagambian is a budding detective! But that’s fine. The presence of the teeth, I mean. For that will knock out, one hundred per cent, one last possible forlorn contention a desperate defense may offer.”

  Beryl Burlinghame looked at her employer puzzledly. “Why, Mr. Vann—isn’t this old, old case all disposed of—and everything—”

  “Heavens no, Beryl. Not at all. It—but what else did he tell you?”

  “Well, he said the skull had a bullet hole—in its back, and the back of its left eye-socket was all shattered, showing that the bullet had come out there.”

  “The dirty dogs!” Vann ejaculated, referring not, however, to well meaning Negroes—but to a criminal outfit now today pretty badly scattered. “But that’ll knock out also any defense that the Chinese lad died a natural death. Not that that would help a certain defendant very much—no!—since the kidnaping charge is plenty. Puh-lenty! But go on, Beryl.”

  “Yes, I will. Gladly—since it interests you so, Mr. Vann. Well, this Negro took the skull home after he found it—he was all alone, incidentally, when he did find it—except that some child thereabouts—some little Russian boy who’d said his name was Vadisclov, and who was about 6 years old—did see him uncover it—anyway, Mr. Klump took it home, cleaned it, and scraped it, and boiled it, and taped its lower jaw to its head proper by a long strip of some white adhesive tape—and then put it religiously away.”

  “Superstitious, Beryl?”

  “Yes. He figured, he says, that possession of the thing would favorably effect his luck in some game called—yes—crappers—and—”

  “Craps,” Vann chuckled. “He wanted a ‘reversed Jonah’—if needs be! But go ahead?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vann. But—but I’ve told you all now, virtually, that he told me. For as soon as he found, from what some Negro on some other job told him about the Schlitzheim Beery, that he must surely have something that was connected with some case where some man was convicted of kidnaping years ago—”

  “No,” corrected Vann. “Convicted only of collecting $50,000 ransom money. Not for kidnaping—no! And for mighty good reasons, the crafty sharks. A man today in Moundsville Penitentiary, down in Illinois about 60 miles or so—but go ahead, Beryl?”

  “Well,” she said undecidedly, “You have all the facts now, Mr, Vann. Mr. Klump lettered his initials—M. K.—in black India ink, on the back of the skull, near the bullet hole—for he was an intelligent Negro—and he wrapped it up and brought it straight down to your office, which he found, of course in the telephone book. And thus it came to me. And I took that full deposition of all he could tell me, and all I could think to ask him, which I am sure was everything. And then fulfilled the necessary legal qualifications of the paper—and locked it safe against fire.”

  “And the skull the same,” commented Vann triumphantly. “Good girl, Beryl! We’ll be in court now, sometime during the next few months—in fact, just before next election!—with a real kidnaping case. And will be writing finis—or practically so—on what was once known as the Parson Gang. And a certain ‘Muscle-In’—getting an easy reward for murder, kidnaping, extortion, and a half-dozen other crimes never brought to light—will now get what he really deserves. The electric chair! Fine—fine—double Fine! Beryl girl, do you realize that this little ‘routine matter’—as you plainly regarded it!—which you just took care of, means my saving my home—squaring up my father’s notes—and God knows what else?”

  The girl looked embarrassed.

  “Well, Mr. Vann,” she said, “I—I couldn’t help but gather from what those men said last week, in the office, that unless you could assemble the necessary elements for a—a sensational and sure conviction to launch just before election, they—they weren’t going to—renominate you. And of course, Mr. Vann, I naturally knew what your bank balance was—nearly zero, after paying off that last note—from keeping your accounts for you. And of course—I knew about the mortgage coming due out there in Oak Park. And the way you’ve been turned down by the loan companies on a renewal. Though one, at least, did say that if you were renominated, they’d make a new loan. But all in all, Mr. Vann, I did, yes, know—even if I am a New Zealander—just what you were up against. The only thing I didn’t know, of course, was that this skull could constitute the elements of a case that—that would save you.”

  “It is, Beryl!” he said jubilantly. “And not just the elements of a case, either—but the case itself! And with that case in my portfolio—as now it is!—I’m renominated! And renominated, I’m the same as re-elected. And re-elected, my dear girl, I can get all in the clear, during the next four years, by the State’s Attorneyship’s salary. Beryl, Beryl—you taffy-haired Antipodean!—you helped Fate herself to put me back on terra firma. And at the same time determine the name of Chicago’s next State’s Attorney as L. Vann, Esquire.”

  “Have I?” she said. “I’m glad. But I suppose that, Mr. Vann, no matter how many times you get re-elected, and hold office, you will always—to your dying day—be known as—” and she stopped short, with a little gasp, as one realizing she had let something slip.

  “As what, my dear girl?” Van asked surprised.

  “Well—” reluctantly, “as—as ‘Lock-the-Stable-Door’ Vann.”

  Vann felt his face and neck turn to a deep cherry.

  “Where—where did you hear that?” he inquired, a bit gruffly.

  “I shouldn’t have spoken,” the girl said impulsively. “It—it just slipped out. But I happened to be riding on a streetcar the other night, behind a blue-coated policeman and obviously a plainclothesman. And they spoke of you. And it made me awfully angry. The tone, that is, in which they referred to you. And both spoke of you as—”

  “Yes, I know. ‘Lock-the-Stable-Door’ Vann.” He paused. “And, being a New Zealander, you are curious?”

  “Well, no, no,” she lied loyally. “I’m—”

  “Yes, you are! Well, it’s simply, my dear girl, that I really believe that a murderer, or a thief, does tend to return to the scene of his crime. And so I often—not always, no, but often—have the scene of a crime covered, on that supposition.”

  “But why, Mr. Vann,” she asked helplessly, “would a criminal do that?”

  “Alas,” he chuckled, getting back his good spirits, “and you too joining the army of skeptics! But the answer to your question is, God knows—I just read it years ago—in a Nick Carter dime novel. And added it to my armamentarium of psychological facts.”

  The girl nodded, but looked pained, as though she still remembered the two policemen discussing her employer.

  “Forget it!” he said, interpreting her feelings. “One doesn’t get office in Chicago without having one bitter nickname amongst the police, another amongst the criminals, and plenty more. ‘Lock-the-Stable-Door’ Vann is sitting very pretty this morning. Thanks to certain help from you in the last few days. And so now what can I do for you?”

  “Well,” she said, a bit undecidedly, “you can, if you want—but Mr. Vann, just how does it come that you know so much about this case? For I take it you were—you were just a struggling barrister—when it transpired?”

  “I’ll say!” was his genial rejoinder. “Sitting in that old Klondike Building—waiting for clients who didn’t come. And having that ancient s
afe, we’ve got there, to indicate the voluminousness of my cash receipts!” He shook his head. “Well, it’s easy to tell you how I and that case met! Foster Emmons—State’s Attorney back in 1930, when the thing really came to a head—was a brilliant man, Beryl, but a drunkard, and a friend of mine. And he hired me, Beryl, to draw up a certain proposed bill of indictment—one which however never got used!—and to make it absolutely attack-proof. He even hired me—” Vann chuckled, “—to write an opening speech for him—to the jury. One also never used! I did him a pretty flowery speech, I fear—though Lord knows my bill of indictment had hard facts a-plenty. Indeed, from the way I went over that case—preparing it for him—I believe that every name, person, date and fact of it is burned on my brain—to remain forever.”

  “Then,” the girl said, spiritedly, “I’ll answer the question you just asked me a moment ago: namely, what you can do for me. You can, Mr. Vann—if you will—tell me the actual circumstances of this kidnaping. For I do so want to be au fait—on American criminological matters.”

  “Gladly—little New Zealander!” Vann said easily. “For I’m, after all, in no vast hurry. And your train hasn’t even drawn up yet. Though—let’s keep our eye on the gates there—just the same! All right. Well, here, in brief, are the circumstances of that famous and very unusual case which first broke 13 years ago in Chicago. The Wah Lee Kidnaping Case!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Kidnapping of Wah Lee

  “Wah Lee,” began Louis Vann, realizing that before many months now, he would be reciting these identical, and highly dramatic, facts in a huge courtroom, “was the only son of Wah Lung, a wealthy Chinese restaurant keeper here on our Rialto. Indeed, Wah Lung still owns, today, Beryl, the restaurant which he owned then—the famous Golden Dragon Inn, on Randolph near Clark—in case you’ve ever eaten in it—and have been willing, therefore, to pay a stiff price for its de luxe dishes—and its drinks! Wah Lung was a widower—and this boy, who was 23 years of age, was, beyond any doubt, the apple of his eye. They had a quarrel of sorts—yes—it took place on the 20th of September, 1927, about a week and a half prior to the ‘snatch’—that being, Beryl, the underworld term used in America for a ‘kidnaping.’ The quarrel—such as it was—had much to do subsequently with the escape from justice of a white scoundrel who should have gone to the electric chair for the job. As to that quarrel, it concerned young Wah’s desire to pay court to a white girl in his university class—for he was, I ought to state, in his senior year at Northwestern University at Evanston, our famous Chicago suburb; but he and his father made the quarrel up. So, at least, the old man subsequently claimed. The facts of the quarrel were overheard by a Chinese cook in the place—who later related it to the then-State’s Attorney. The facts of the making-up, however, rested solely upon the old man’s statement; and he claimed that his son Wah Lee acknowledged himself to be in the wrong—agreed to put the white girl out of his heart and his life.

  “Be that as it may, Beryl, Wah Lee had once before, it seems, narrowly escaped being the victim of a ‘snatch’—for his father was known to be extremely prosperous, and it was likely, you may be sure, that the snatch-gangs of that day would have considered the only son of a rich Chicago father! Anyway, a gang once nearly got Wah Lee—when the latter was walking along the Lake—shortly after leaving his first class for the day at the University—but he had succeeded in climbing into a passing car, and giving them the slip. But he had been warned, by a couple of friendly detectives who were delegated to look into it—though fruitlessly—to keep always amongst people—amongst crowds. And never to broadcast his intended movements—certainly, at least, not to suspicious persons.” Vann paused. “Well, to make a long story short, Wah Lee, on the 25th day of September, that same year, went to the Ingleside Hospital—a little hospital situated at that time on busy 63rd Street—to have a difficult sinus operation performed. The hospital was at such a place that life literally teemed about it on two streets—surface cars, you know?—L-road trains—trucks—automobiles—passing people. A more than safe place, so far as any kidnaping might go. The day he went there was, if you’ll note, a week after that quarrel. And the operation was performed the second day after he went there. Or on September 27th. And by a Doctor Hancoast Bradley, a specialist associated with the hospital—but now dead.

  “Wah Lee had, it seems,” continued Vann, “walled-in pus in his right sphenoid sinus—a small cavern, Beryl, back virtually under the brain-case. And the specialist there at the Ingleside Hospital—Dr. Bradley—had decided to do a somewhat standard operation for that specific condition—namely to chop back through the various structures of the nose—on that side only, of course—and enlarge the opening of that sphenoid cavern so that it would drain itself—and become permanently cured. A rather difficult operation, as I understand, and not being a surgeon I can’t describe the details of it other than, perhaps, to say that amputation of a certain thin hanging panel of mucous-membrane-covered bone—yes, the very thing that Klump has described to you as still remaining on the other side, and as a ‘li’1 hangin’ shingle’!—but known correctly as the ‘middle turbinate,’ is the first stage of the operation. Anyway, be that as it may, Wah Lee went through the operation—and quite successfully—and late on October and was notified that he could go home late next afternoon—and continue irrigating his nose with normal salt solution at home. So—some two hours before he left, that next day—that was at 3 p.m.—he phoned his father that, since he was so near to Jackson Park, home of—as you may not know, Beryl—the famous Japanese Bridge, which is over the junction of two of the isolated lagoons—as I said, he phoned his father that he was going to step over there, before going on home, and make some pencil sketches of the bridge for a graduating thesis he was then writing on Japanese Architectural Art. His father demurred, stoutly, deeming it inadvisable, since the park was devoid of people in that time of the year—and especially that late part of the day—but the boy pointed out that no white gangs knew he was going there, and assured his father, moreover, that he would slip out by the back door of the hospital—go around the block by way of Ingleside Avenue, and back to 63rd street—and take the 63rd Street surface car, on another corner, for the park. And—”

  “Might I ask,” put in the girl, frowning, “if that was not an awfully foolish thing to do!—to talk openly, on a hospital phone, about his—his movements?”

  “As for that,” said Vann, frowning himself, “he talked in Chinese—and he was, as is known, the only Chinese—and moreover, Chinese-speaking individual—in the hospital.” Vann was, nevertheless, perplexedly silent a moment; then continued. “And so—Wah Lee went to the park. Getting there—so it was subsequently figured—around 4 p.m. The day half fading. And there, Beryl, he was ‘snatched.’ By a gang with 4 gangsters in it. White gangsters. And—”

  “How—how did the authorities know that, Mr. Vann? I mean that he definitely was ‘snatched’?”

  “How? A child—named Tommy Evans—sailing a boat in the lagoon close by saw the whole occurrence. The car, moreover—according to the boy’s story—had been parked there for a full two hours. Waiting, you see, for its quarry to arrive! And when Wah Lee did finally show up in that then isolated stretch of trees and shrubbery, the car’s passengers—all of whom had gotten out and were, like tourists or something, apparently inspecting famous bridge—marched Wah Lee into the car guns pointed at him, presumably, from their pockets. Easy enough, for at that hour—just before dusk—the great park was as good as deserted.”

  “Well, if,” the girl asked puzzledly, “that was the kidnaping, how on earth did that gang learn that Wah Lee would be at the bridge—learn it so definitely in fact that—”

  “—that,” put in Vann, frowning, “they were even able to beat him there by a full two hours?” He paused. “That, Beryl, was always one of the mysteries of the case. None of the hospital employees subsequently questioned apparently knew the boy’s plans. At least�
��if anyone did—he or she lied about having known them. And lied about having inadvertently, perhaps, dropped the information to someone else—someone through whom, by some devilish machina­tions, it might conceivably have flown straight to the underworld. All, however, were pretty reputable and decent people. It was even advanced that the boy might have chatted with some visitor the afternoon or evening before—and for some reason naively revealed his plans—some visitor who might have known to whom in the underworld Wah Lee’s movements would be of value. The final theory, bizarre as it sounds, was that Wah Lung’s telephone wire had been tapped—and his conversations listened in on by someone who could understand Chinese. For the police found actual evidences of some old tapping—date unknown!—of that circuit where the wires ran under the sill of a room in an old hotel on Randolph Street at the side of the restaurant. The occupant of the room—at least on the day the particular conversation was held which had revealed Wah Lee’s plans—had, however, been a white man. And, if innocent of complicity with the plot—a mere transient, for he was never named, and never came forward either—afraid, no doubt, of being beaten by the police. A white man, bronzed as though he had been in many places about the world. That—and the tapped wire—were the only bases for presuming that the secret conversation in Chinese had been picked up for the gang. If there was a visiting ‘finger-man,’ Beryl, at or in the hospital—a ‘finger-man’ being the term for the man who makes it possible for a gang to find its victim at the proper point in space and time—the fact could not, and never was, ascertained. For the simple reason that Wah Lee was never recovered alive to detail to the police his actions, conversations, and et cetera, prior to his kidnaping.”