“Why—why—what did he do, Archbishop? Make a pass at you? If he did—” And Limp’s hand went subconsciously to the revolver at his belt.
“Oh, no, no, no, Daniel. He was unusually reserved and quiet. He—but I’d better tell you, I think, just what happened. I drew up alongside of him—as though I too were wanting to take a car. And Professor Mustaire here drew up—oh, about 5 feet from us. And then it was that one of the Professor’s ex-pupils, coming across the street, recognized him—and asked him—what was that now, Professor, he asked you—in deaf-and-dumb language?”
“He asked me,” said Mustaire, “where the new Roosevelt Building was? And I told him—with my fingers, of course.”
“Yes,” Archbishop Pell nodded. “And so, Daniel, there we three stood. Quite segregated—so far as other people went. Your red-haired man, let me say, was not now engaged on the working of his puzzle, but it lay, face up, partly under the rubber band which held the cover of his box to the box itself. In readiness, as at least I fancied, for resuming it on the streetcar. At any rate, thus we three stood—myself at the red-headed man’s elbow, and Professor here 5 feet away. But he—your red-haired man—had seen Professor talk with his hands—and evidently thought him to be a deaf-mute. And so, looking down at his crimson box, I said, very friendlily: ‘I’m Archbishop Pell.’ Thinking, of course, that he’d heard of me. And I added: ‘What have you in the box?’”
“And—he?” queried Limp. “What’d he say? ‘No spik Inglize’?”
“No—oh no. Not to me. He spoke English. That is, Daniel, you might call it English. I call it—”
“What’d he say?” asked Limp, very businesslike.
The Archbishop was actually indulging now in the plebeian motion of scratching his own gray head.
“What did he say, Archbishop?” pressed Limp. “When you asked him what he had in the box?”
“We-ell, Daniel, this is what he said: He said—”
The Archbishop paused quite helplessly.
“He said,” he continued: “‘Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.’”
Limp’s mouth fell wide open.
“Wah—Lee’s—skull?” he ejaculated. “And—and that he’d cracked Vann’s safe?”
“Vann’s ‘pete,’” corrected the other. “He used, I regret to say, evidently correct criminological terminology.”
“Listen,” put in Kilgallon, “he seen Professor here—making sign language with this deaf-and-dumb pupil?”
The Professor himself nodded. And put in full official confirmation of what had just been related.
“Yes, Officer Kilgallon. I was only 5 feet away. And could hear everything. And when Archbishop here asked him—after introducing himself as Archbishop Pell, what he had in the box, he absolutely said: ‘Wah Lee’s skull. I cracked Vann’s pete.’ I read myself to sleep many a night with detective stories, and the last part of his statement was completely intelligible to me—even significant, in the face of the fact that both of you had just been mentioning our own State’s Attorney Vann. As for the Chinese name ‘Wah Lee,’ however, which the red-haired man repeated, that, I might say, is devilishly familiar to me, though I cannot, for the life of me, figure how or why—it seems to be something I dimly remember as part of a world story breaking years ago when I was in South Africa.” And Mustaire shrugged his shoulders in the French manner.
“And—and he had the stinking gall—to say he had Wah Lee’s skull—and that he’d kicked in Vann’s box? Well the dirty, wise-cracking son-of-a-bit—sea-cook,” Limp hastily corrected himself, seeing the Archbishop’s eyes resting sadly on him. “Pulling some high comedy on the open stree—But by Jesu—I mean by—by gorry—how’d he even know that—” Limp broke off, seeing Professor Mustaire taking in everything wide-eyed. And to himself only he added: “How the hell did that red-thatched son-of-a-bitch know that Vann’s pete was made last night? And that skull snitched? Yeah—that’s the question—and how!”
He looked up.
“Listen, Archbishop, this—this knocks me for a goal. A wisecracker, that baby, perhaps, who’s caught a lead to—listen. You said—‘I’m Archbishop Pell’?”
“Yes, Daniel.”
“And then you asked: ‘What have you in the box’?”
“Yes, Daniel.”
“And he said—”
“‘Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.’ That, Daniel, was exactly what he said.”
“An’—an’—but what happened then, Archbishop?”
“Well—he seemed to see instanter that he’d—he’d knocked me for a goal too!—For he said, ‘Pardon me, Your Reverence—I took you for somebody else. Just—just skip it, will you?’ And then Professor Mustaire and I—to save our face, as the Chinese put it!—climbed aboard an Adams Street car just drawing up—no—Daniel—your man didn’t board the car at all; he stayed right on where he was—and we, Professor and I rounded the corner on the car, but rode only one-half block, getting off at the mid-block Post Office door stop back of us—and making the conductor think, I am quite sure, that we were both crazy!”
Limp passed a red hand helplessly over his brow.
“No, you ain’t crazy,” he commented. “But he is. That red-thatched lug, I mean. That is, he is, or—or he’s a smart-aleck wise-cracking bast—ahem—gazabo, who ought to be—but no, it can’t be that, neither, because—oh, well, whatever he is, he’s a goddam—I mean gol-darned—liar, since he spoke English to you, but give me—th’ Law—the runaround. Well—I’ll just follow Regulation No. 6—covering the case. Meaning, Archbishop, that I’ll have the squad car look into him and his crimson box. Yes, that’s what I will. For—but here comes the squad car now!”
CHAPTER XIV
The Contents of a Crimson Box
Senior Squad-Car Officer “Hoke” Morgan leaned forward in Loop Squad Car No. 18—known as The Good Ship S. W. L., because it was delegated to cover the southwestern quarter only of the Loop and the Loop’s outlying fringe—and spoke to its driver, “Heimie” Blivens,
“Draw over to the curb yonder, Heimie,” he ordered.
“Limp Kilgallon is giving us a highball.”
Which plainly Officer Kilgallon was.
And a second later the car, carrying its three officers—one in the driver’s seat, and two in the rear seat—was at the curb next the southeast cornerstone of the Old Post Office.
“Hi, Limp,” Hoke said. “What can we do for you? And who was the fat priest—and the guy with the handlebar on his lip—you were just talking to?”
“You’d be surprised!” was Kilgallon’s only answer to the latter query. Then added: “And as to what you can do for me—you can do nothing. But, for the Psychopathic Hospital you can maybe do something.”
“The Psychopathic? You want, that is, to be locked in a padded cell? Glad to oblige. Get in.” And Hoke Morgan threw open the door leading to the space in the back of the car.
“Cut the comedy, Hoke,” said Limp grumpily. “For ’tis comedy I guess—plus red-hair!—why I just called you over. Anyway, this is the set-up. There’s a bird, Hoke, been standing for—oh, Christ knows how long—on the curb, straight through from us here on Adams Street—” And Limp made a sweep, back of him, with his hand, “—with a bright red pasteboard box under his arm, workin’ a crossword puzzle. But taking no streetcar—like any law-abiding person waiting on the curb should be doing—or else moving on. Looks like he’s going to stand there all day. His box has got holes punched in each end, and when I asked him, polite like, what he had in it—and he told me ‘No spik Inglize,’ I moseyed on, for I don’t know how to chew the fat in no languages but English. And besides—he wasn’t busting no rules nor regulations. But I had reasons, Hoke, to want to know a little more about him—no no, he don’t look like no hood—though, b’God, Hoke, he does, at that! Yes, he does!—anyway, Hoke, he’s got red hair, if that
means anything to you, and—but anyway, as I stood near the main Post Office door, who should come down the steps but my good friend the Archbishop of Chicago—Archbishop Pell—he knew my mother—and ’twas he and no fat priest I was just talking to—in fact, that’s his Purple car going down Jackson towards Federal Street now, and—but where the hell was I?—oh yes—well anyway, I give him the setup, an’ he offered to question this guy—friendly like.”
“And why the hell why,” demanded Hoke, “should the guy be questioned? That special S. A. order we’re carryin’ today ain’t to pull in every Tom, Dick and Harry who just happens to have a ‘z’ point in his pic.”
“No, I know it ain’t,” agreed Limp wearily. “Only this guy—what didn’t ‘spik Inglize’—was workin’, atop his goddamned blood-colored box, a crossword puzzle—with English words. That’s—why,” he ended triumphantly.
“Well, why,” asked Hoke pointedly, “didn’t you tilt the lid of his box—and look for yourself?”
“Oh—yeah? With this Courtesy Rule?—just out of the Mayor’s office last week? And have this bird go to the Commission—and get me 10 days layoff? No, I done a more log’cal thing. My friend the Archbishop spiels 8 languages—so I had him go and call the guy’s turn.”
“Meaning—what?”
“Meaning to ask the guy—friendly like—what he had in the box.”
“Which he did, I suppose? And the guy said ‘no spik’?”
“No he didn’t. He said—in direc’ answer to my friend the Archbishop, as to what he had in the box—he said—he said—”
“Well—what in th’ hell did he say? Don’t forget we’re under them same Courtesy Rules as you. What’d he say?”
“We-ell—he said somethin’ incriminatin’ him. As—as a boxman. Yeah—I know—maybe pulling comedy. But, if ’twas comedy, well—but I think you should oughta run around there, call him over to the car, and give him the general once-over. Which is what my book of regulations says I am to do—in case I find a suspicious-acting bird. Call you—and give you the order to frisk him.”
“Give us an order?” said Hoke scornfully. “That’s good! A flattie like you, you lug—giving Admiral Hoke of the S. S. S. W. L.—orders!” He surveyed Limp genially. “So—you think, Limp ol’ boy ol’ boy, we should pull your chestnut out of the fire, eh?” He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Drive on, Heimie.”
“No—wait,” begged Limp. “Wait—Hoke. He—this bird—he—he said something to the Archbishop that might a-been comedy—but I don’t know how, by Christ, he knew th’ facts—to make comedy out of ’em. He—well, that’s why it was incriminating. It wasn’t th’ words so much as—how—how he knew, see?”
“It’s your play,” declared Hoke coldly. “If you want a citizen frisked, you better put the old cards on the table—and all of ’em too. Exactly what’d he say?”
Limp scratched his head. And squirmed. Then spoke.
“Listen, Hoke—do you know what’s back of that special S. A. order of today?”
“I do not. Nor does anybody else, I guess. Though you ought to know—with a son in his offices.”
“Well,” assented Limp troubledly, “I—I do. Yes. And—and I’m gonna tell you. I—but you won’t spill it, Hoke, to no newspaperman? For it’s scheduled to drop on the newsstands at—at 5 tonight.”
“No—no—we won’t. What’s back of it?”
Limp turned to the driver. “Heimie, you won’t drop off in some tavern now—and pass what I’m about to tell you all to no newspaperman?”
“I will not,” declared Heimie.
“And you—Mac?” Limp asked, of the officer who sat alongside Hoke Morgan.
“Nary a word will leak from me, Limp,” said Mike McCarthy.
Limp appeared satisfied.
“Okay then. Well, Hoke—a box was blowed early this morning. About—about 6 bells. In—in Evanston. And the box was owned by a friend of the S. A.!”
“Oh-oh!” said Hoke. “Playing close to the fire, eh? How many grand?”
“Five—six, I think,” said Limp. “But amongst the loot was a sconce—no no, I mean the bone of a sconce—a skull, see?—and—”
“Sa-ay,” broke in Hoke. “Are you snuffin’ coke—somewhere along your beat, Limp? Why th’ hell would a box-man take a sconce?”
“I—I don’t know,” was Limp’s reply. And uttered, as Hoke Morgan noted, as by a man backed into a corner. “But—but this one did. A sconce that was a famous Shakespearnian relict. It even had a hole in the back of it, where a bullet had gone in, an’ come out its left eye, and—”
“I never heard that Shakespeare was murdered,” said Heimie Blivens quietly.
“Keep quiet, will you,” growled Limp. “This here sconce was a relict from—from some of his plays. It had its jawbone taped to it, with white surgical tape. And it had initials on the back—near th’ bullet hole—of ‘M. K.’ Them standing for, you ignorant boobs, for ‘Mooy Klippatry,’ meanin’, in Swedish, Prince of—of Denmarckia. For—for this here skull, you see, was the skull of Hamelet hisself. A fact. Used for years by Sir Richard—now what the hell was the name of that famous Shakespearnian actor?”
“Sir Richard Axton,” put in Mike McCarthy sepulchrally.
“Yes. That’s it. Sir Richard Axton. And—”
“You better drive on, Heimie,” said Hoke. “This here setup is getting wilder and wilder. And we’re only humble coppers—in a big city.”
“No—wait,” pleaded Limp. “I tell you them are all true facts. The guy’s name whose box was kicked in, is Doolittle. Claude Doolittle. Though he ain’t listed in the Evanston directory. No. And this job—now don’t go—was a bumb-off job. Yeah. The boxman, he bumped off a hack—one of the Evanston night hacks. Shot him square through the ticker. A fact. And remember this is all on the Q. T. But getting back now to this guy back there on Adams Street. When my friend the Archbishop asked him what he had in the box, what th’ hell do you think the lug said?”
“What?”
“He said: ‘That actor’s sconce; I kicked in Doolittle’s gopher.’ “ And Limp made a triumphant gesture with his hands.
Now it was Hoke Morgan’s turn to scratch his chin.
“Kidding the cloth, that’s all,” he said at last.
“But this box job, Hoke, ain’t been in the papers—”
“It ain’t? Not even in Evanston? And yet this guy—knows all about—”
“Right. And, moreover, if he was kidding an Archbishop, he wouldn’t have said ‘kicked in a gopher.’ He—would have just said he’d just blowed a safe.”
“Maybe,” put in Mike McCarthy—though quite sarcastically, “he was th’ boxman—but thought y’r fri’nd, th’ Archbishop, was a runner for th’ Parson Gang?”
“Th’ Parson Gang?” echoed Limp. “Oh yes—the old Parson Gang? We-ell—well, by Jesus Christ, that’s maybe what he did at that! By Christ, I—I never thought of that. And that was the very gang what was mixed up with—” He broke off, with sudden shortness. “Well, Hoke—I’ve made me report to you. And will have to state, in my daily report to headquarters, that I did make this report to you. And so’s mine c’n be complete, will ye be so kind as to tell me whether you are—or whether you ain’t—gonna look this guy over?”
“Oh,” said Hoke, “we’ll question him—have a look in his box—and, even if he’s on the up-and-up, tell him to quit loafing around the Post Office. He ain’t mixed up in no box job. He wouldn’t be out here—if he was.”
“Okay,” said Limp. “I’ll be flagging you again—within an hour. Or you, me.” And taking advantage evidently of the green light, he dove across Jackson Boulevard.
“Scoot around, Heimie,” ordered Hoke. “And let’s let the air out of Limp’s coke dream. Actors’ sconces! With initials ‘M. K.’—standing for Mooey Kaflooey—or Hamlet—or what th’ hell. And bullet ho
les? Phooey! Arabian Nights!”
And it was no more than one quarter of a minute when the squad car, rounding the corner at Adams and Dearborn Streets, drew up at the curbing some seven or eight feet beyond the point where people waiting for the streetcars would stand—a point from which even now several car-waiters were flooding towards an Adams Street car coming to a grinding stop. All, that is, but one man—a man with the identical description given by Limp: red-dish hair—and bright scarlet pasteboard box under his arm. A man who remained where he was—even as the Adams Street car ground off. And remained, moreover, standing where he was—even when the squad car came to a stop but 5—6 feet beyond him.
Hoke Morgan, opening the door, looked out.
“Hi, friend,” he called. “Draw over this way—a minute.”
The man with the crimson-hued box looked surprised—indeed downright suspicious.
“Why?” he asked.
“For some good advice, that’s all,” said Hoke, his face darkening.
The man stared at the officer with his calculating brown eyes. Then stepped over to the squad car apprehensively. Hoke Morgan noted that the cover of the other’s box was held to the box proper by a tight rubber band; while tucked but partly underneath the band, on the lid, was a partly worked crossword puzzle.
“Waiting for somebody?” Hoke inquired.
“No. Waiting—for a streetcar.”
“Well—what was wrong with that one that just passed!”
“Oh, that one?” The man adjusted the cap on his head, as one obviously a bit nonplused. “Too—too crowded. Figured the next one will have nobody on it.”
“I see? Well, get in here—and we’ll ride you up to the next car stop.”
“Get in? Why! Am I arrested?”
“Arrested? Hell—no! We just want to take you to where you can get aboard—ahead of the shoppers down here. Get in—we don’t want to be drawing a crowd. Get in. We’ll let you out one—two blocks up.”
“Well, I don’t want—”
“Get—in!” ordered Hoke, putting a hand menacingly into his coat.
The Man with the Crimson Box Page 11
