The Man with the Crimson Box

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Portfolio speaking, Mr. Vann.”

  “Hello, Portfolio. Have you got your portfolio?”

  And Vann was inquiring about that article which always made Portfolio Smith, detective and plainclothesman, look exactly like a salesman waiting on the corner for a customer. He was, Vann always had thought, the only detective in the bureau who never looked like one! Which was one of three reasons why Vann wanted him now. And the other two reasons—well, Portfolio possessed that hyper-magic nose for smelling out people who were not what they purported to be—and Portfolio believed implicitly in Vann’s theory!

  “Portfolio,” Vann said, “I’ve just arranged with Captain C. that you’re to do special work today for me.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Vann. I like to work for you. Though, damn it, we never prove up!”

  “Oh, we will some day, Portfolio. For the theory is right. The criminal should—if he’s at all human—return to the scene of his crime! Only, Portfolio, he doesn’t always and invariably do it—and we’ve caught all the cases where he hasn’t. That’s all.”

  “I hope so, Mr. Vann. Because the boys will razz hell out of me tomorrow—when they find I was specialling for you. For they’ll know exactly why. Well—er—where is it this time, Mr. Vann?”

  “My own old office building, Portfolio. The Klondike.”

  “Oh yes, I know it. And would you care to let me in on the facts!”

  “Naturally, Portfolio.” And for the sake of the barest possible telephone line inspector listening in on the automatic circuit, Vann used some code phrases known only to himself and his sympathetic assistant in theory! “Portfolio,” he said, “the ‘creep’ in that building caught a ‘slide’ last night—and my ‘twicker’ was ‘libbed.’”

  “The—the hell you say, Mr. Vann!” And Portfolio gave vent to a whistle.

  “It’s confidential however, Portfolio—a news scoop, for 2:30, for the kid brother—which is another reason I didn’t want to risk anybody but you.”

  “Nary a word, Mr. Vann. Rest assured.”

  “I know it. Well, Portfolio, all I want you to do is the same old thing. Take up the old stance—out in front—and use your own judgment—and your head. For you’ve the best nose in the whole department—the only nose, in fact—for smelling out persons who have no business to be where they are.”

  “Thanks.” And Portfolio sounded as though he were nodding proudly. “I have made a record with my crim’nological smeller, haven’t I!” Portfolio paused. “You haven’t any clue as to who done it, Mr. Vann?”

  “None. But we’ve several chances at our theory, I think.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Inspector Scott seems to think it was a one-man job. But after all, that sort of thing is sheer hypothesis. And even if I’d caught the man with the actual goods—I’d still want you posted there—to try and nab a possible accomplice.”

  “Well, Mr. Vann, I’ll report at once. And—”

  “And, Portfolio,” Vann interrupted, “you know all the newspapermen, don’t you? Bar none?”

  “There ain’t one in Chi I don’t know. Nor news photographer neither.”

  “All right! When the story does break at 2:30, I rather think they’ll lay off completely—realizing naturally that it’s Hugh’s, from A to Izzard. But if any particular one comes breezing around, you can just tell ’em the place is locked tight. And photographed. And there’ll be no influx into it, even when the coroner makes his formal examination later on today, on the premises. After all, it’s my office—and I think I’ve got something to say.”

  “You got all there is to say,” assented Portfolio loyally. “And I’ll report at once—and just you be sure the old nose is hungry to do its stuff today.”

  “I’m so sure of your nose, Portfolio,” declared Vann, “that I wouldn’t even think of putting anybody else on the job.”

  “And if,” Portfolio now asked, “anything develops? Where will I fetch him for questioning?”

  “Well,” was Vann’s answer, “who gets the biggest kick out of our theory, Portfolio? And who razzes us the worst?”

  “Cap Congreve—of course!”

  “All right. Then if, by the thousandth chance—”

  “I get you, Mr. Vann! I’ll set him right down in Cap’s lap. And enjoy not watching him crack—if, God willing, he does—but watching Cap watch him crack! All right. I’ll be reporting over there at once and—hey, hey there, boy—keep your hands off that portfolio! Good—by, Mr. Vann.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Discomfiture of Sebastien Squires

  Rutgers Allstyn, attorney and specialist in the law of contract, snapped together the jaws of his traveling bag, and gazed speculatively about his luxuriously furnished office fronting on both the great stone esplanade of North Wacker Drive and the Chicago River, the latter body of water as green today as the inch-thick carpet which covered Allstyn’s floor. Then, deciding he was overlooking nothing on the eve of his trip out of town, he took up his derby hat, and his silk-lined driving gauntlets lying close by the hat, and with his other hand reached for his bag.

  But at this juncture, Squires, the old antediluvian law clark and Cerberus who for years had maintained vigil over Allystyn’s outside chamber, entered the room, his thin black clothes flapping over his long gaunt frame. He closed the door carefully to behind him before he spoke.

  “I—I don’t suppose, Mr. Allstyn,” he said deferentially, “that now, that you’re all in readiness to leave, you would even consider seeing a client.”

  “A client?” asked Allstyn, surprised. “Somebody with an appointment—whom we overlooked!”

  “Oh no, sir. This client just took a chance and came in—without any appointment.”

  “Oh! Well, tell him—or her, as the case may be!—to come back some oth—but here—” Allstyn looked at his watch. Its hands were at 10 minutes to 1. “After all, I’m not making a train or a plane out of here. And I daresay I could spare a few min—but, on the other hand, I don’t want to encumber my mind today with bus—well, what kind of a client is it?”

  “A very odd—ahem!—looking young man,” pronounced Squires, as one who had quite no realization that he himself resembled nothing so much as a gaunt old crow.

  “Odd-looking?” exclaimed Allstyn. “In what way, Squires?”

  “It—it would be extremely difficult, sir, for me to—to formulate a precise answer to that question,” pronounced Squires, gazing, for some reason, stolidly at the floor.

  “Then,” commented the lawyer, “he must have three arms and two heads. Has he?”

  “No, he has not,” declared Squires, looking up from the floor again. “Though I feel emboldened to say, sir, that it might be better were he thus encumbered, instead of being—ahem—what he—that is, as he is!”

  “My gosh, Squires,” commented Allstyn. “Whatever he is—it’s plain to be seen that you don’t approve of him at all.”

  “I do not approve, no—ahem—of young men who affect—that is, who use—” But Squires would not continue. “I get you, Squires! It’s plain he uses perfume or—God help us both—rouge! Well, that would make him—at least to me—more interesting. Only, alas, the last client I had in that general category—the fellow who wore high-heeled shoes—wanted to talk about four hours.”

  “This young—ahem!—man, Mr. Allstyn, says he wants but five minutes of your time.”

  “Five minutes?” laughed Allstyn. “Well, that would mean 15—at the very least! But all right. Your description of him, Squires—or rather, your utter failure to describe him—intrigues ‘meh’; and your several ‘ahems’ confirm him as indeed being worth the viewing. Show him in.”

  “Yes sir. But before I do so—and in case he keeps you a bit too long, and you rush off—where, Mr. Allstyn, will this office be able to get in touch with you during the 3 or 4 days you
expect to be gone?”

  “Ah, Squires—that, I regret to say, is to remain the riddle supreme! For I haven’t yet forgotten how the reporters tricked and wormed out of you my whereabouts—back in the Custerball proceedings. And cost us the case! No reaction on you, though, old chap, because it’s your confounded natural sterling honesty which makes it impossible for you to meet them on their ground. I leave here—yes—when your young odd—ahem—man leaves—driving in my own car; but whether I shall be driving east, west, north or south—or how many hundred miles—will have to remain the most subterranean of state secrets. For I leave, Squires, to draw up a contract, for a client in a distant city—or might it maybe be just a town?—who knows?—and which contract is to be filed—though in quite another city!—within a few hours after it is drawn. Reporters who will sense that that contract is a type that is strictly up my alley—of all the lawyers in the Midwest—will come here immediately to find out where I went—thus to locate the client! Who happens to be an individual who has successfully dodged service now for one entire year in a court action. And by which dodging he protects a lady’s name. And the lady herself being at one time my friend. All a bit complicated, Squires, yes—but the point is that if you don’t know where on God’s green earth I am, you won’t be able to tell the reporters a confounded thing, will you?”

  “I daresay not, sir. No. But now—supposing that the American Railway Express should call back here—as they thought they might possibly do during the next half hour—to tell us whether that packet with the missing address label which they located in Kalamazoo was the one containing the Striebel documents. You would want, I presume, to know—”

  “Well, I’d rather know than not to know—yes!”

  “Well then where, sir, could I get that information to you?”

  “You can’t, Squires. For the simple reason that—but here—I am going to stop off at the old ancient decrepit Ulysses S. Grant Building on my way forth from the city, to see whether the elevator man there has picked up anything regarding the address of that former tenant there who witnessed the Haley will. And since I’m there, I think I’ll just run in to a certain tiny 2 by 4 office on the 10th floor and say hello to its lone occupant. And so you can leave any message coming in in the next half hour from the Railway Express company with this occupant—or maybe even catch me sitting there. The occupant will be, incidentally, Elsa Colby.”

  “Elsa Colby?” ejaculated Squires, his seamed face lighting up. “And how is the child?”

  “Child, Squires? Good—heavens! Elsa?—24 years old!—and a full-fledged criminal attorney?—and you call her a child?”

  “I call her even, sir—begging your pardon—an infant.”

  “Well, all I can say to that, Squires, is that if she heard you say that, her red hair would crackle—actually crackle; her blue eyes would flash zigzag streaks of high-tension electricity at you; and the freckles on her nose, Squires—they would pop right off at you like gatling-gun bullets. Elsa Colby—graduate criminal attorney—24 years old—an infant!”

  “How is she doing at her profession!” asked Squires—though whether to change the angle of the subject or not, no one could know.

  “Starving to death, of course, Squires. But since she weighs only 95 pounds or so anyway—the process isn’t nearly as painful as it probably was in the case of George ‘Fatty’ Burgerson, the embryonic land-tenure specialist, who really did die from starvation while waiting for business! And—but what does any lawyer do, Squires—just out of college?”

  But Squires did not reply to the question to which everybody in the legal procession knew the answer. Instead he said: “Well, I will ring you at Elsa Colby’s office, then—in case the Railway Express reports. And after that—well, you will be gone indeed. And I—I don’t like it, not knowing where on earth you are. It—it isn’t good business.”

  “No? And why on earth isn’t it? I have no wife. No child. Nothing. And my only brother, moreover, now touring India. It is a great relief to me, Squires, to play hookey from my own identity for a few days. A vacation, no less. So avaunt, now, Sebastien Squires. And let me hear the woes of this young—ahem—odd—ahem-looking client!”

  And a moment later the visitor just under discussion entered the room.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The “Clown” Who Would a “Hamlet” Be!

  The client was, to say the least, odd-looking! At least—so far as Rutgers Allstyn’s regular clientele went. Not, however, merely in that the visitor was small in stature—no more than 5 feet 5 inches—and very slender. Nor that he was impec­cably, immaculately dressed, and about 25 years of age. Nor in that he wore the daintiest of mustaches on his upper lip, and a yellow flower—carefully selected, obviously, for its pure perfection of petal pattern—in his lapel buttonhole. Nor that the corner of a lavender silk handkerchief peeped from his outer handkerchief pocket. Nor in that on his Grecian nose reposed a pair of slender rimless eyeglasses, through which he peered a bit myopically or else astigmatically, the eyeglasses being themselves attached by a silken inch-broad black ribbon to his top vest button. Nor even, in fact, that he wore a huge, flowing, flowery black Windsor tie—true mark of either the “lit’ry man,” or the artist who does not sell enough of his canvasses to become a “business man.” No, this young man was odd-looking for the simple reason that, on each of his cheeks, was a deftly applied area of rouge. Undoubted rouge! And carelessly applied, at least today—for the site on one cheek did not exactly match the site on the other. Plainly, Allstyn saw, this young man was one of those beings—talented in some field, or otherwise—who live on the perilous fringe between crocheting sofa pillows for a living—and being a man in a man’s world. And yet—as Allstyn was also to find out a few moments later—a young man whose dainty number 6 feet rested so securely on the masculine edge of that fringe, that his voice held no trace whatsoever of fuzziness—and he possessed, moreover, ambition to marry—and have children!

  A highly, extremely feminine creature, that is all. As Allstyn was shortly to discover. A being such as bold bad truckdrivers often, on deserted streets, hoot derisively at.

  “Are you—Mr. Rutgers Allstyn?” he asked.

  “I am,” said Allstyn gruffly. And then, being at heart a man extremely tolerant of all human frailities and deficiencies, and feeling he had been far too brusque, he added: “And what might I be able to do for you! Just draw the door to, there behind you—yes—and have this chair.” And Allstyn, indicating the great comfortable chair in question, dropped into his own swivel seat, and waited curiously till the other had closed the door on the outer room, and had seated himself in that official visitor’s chair. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Allstyn, I’ve come to you for an opinion—on a contract.

  “On drawing one up?”

  “No, on breaking one.”

  “Oh—breaking one, eh? I see. Well—is this a clothesline quarrel or something? Some personal difference—arisen between 2 persons?”

  “Oh no, Mr. Allstyn. No quarrel. No. No, my idea in breaking this contract is to improve my general financial condition. And also, incidentally, my prestige.”

  Allstyn raised his brows queryingly.

  “The prestige angle I do not grasp,” he said. “But the financial condition—well, have you some definite aims in view—with respect to improving your positions Marriage?” And he waited for the young man to shudder visibly.

  But the young man did not at all shudder. “We-ell yes, I aim—yes—to be married. If and when things are—ahem—propitious.”

  “Indeed? Well, I am greatly interested in marriages—because of a theory I have as to Nature demanding, through marriage, a complete admixture of types—ahem—racial types. Do you mind describing your intended in that impending marriage—though, first, is your affection reciprocated?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. She loves me!”

  “T
hat is fine. She—but describe her, if you don’t object. Merely a matter, you understand, of my studies in marital attraction.”

  “Gladly, Mr. Allstyn. Well, she is a fine big 6-foot-high girl, who works in a coal yard—checking the weight of outgoing coal wagons. She dresses most modestly—chief in tweed suits. Her hair she wears short—thus.” The young man showed where his intended’s hair had been cut. “And she weighs 175 pounds. Healthy, too—the proper mother, don’t you know, to be the mother of my children.”

  “Oh—yes. Yes, of course. Well just what, if I may ask, is delaying this marriage?”

  “Well, she insists on our living in a house. And I insist absolutely on our living in a trailer—something which now today I do. We haven’t agreed on that—and various other things—and so matters are in—in statu quo.”

  “The Trailer Age—alas!” commented Allstyn. “What kind of car do you drive?”

  “I don’t drive any at all.”

  “But I thought you said you lived in a trail—”

  “Oh yes, I do. A trailer without wheels.”

  “Without—wheels? Why—what—”

  “This one is parked, on four packing boxes, on a vacant lot at Superior Street and North State Street. Though you can’t see it, because it’s back of billboards on both streets. The lot is owned by Wm. Juggenberger, Jr. of New York. The trailer, a quite elaborate one, was originally his. And he allows me to live there, at 5 cents a year, to maintain occupancy of that lot for him so that—”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes. I know that lot. It’s surrounded by bill­boards two high! There was something in Juggenberger Senior’s will that the lot couldn’t be left to rot without tenants—or without income both. And that title to it was forfeited to his son if it were. Well, well—so you’ve realized your ambi­tion? You live in a trailer? Behind a fence—30 feet high!”

  “Precisely. Yes.”

  “And how—how do you get in? And out? Of the lot, I mean?”

  “Oh there is a slot on the Superior Street side, between the end of the billboard and the adjoining building, by which one can pass in or out.”