The Man with the Wooden Spectacles

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  I awoke in the gray dawn. And St, George was standing by my bedside. Staring, open-mouthed, at the skull, sitting on the table by my bed. It seems he had come in to ask if I had any Bromo-Seltzer or aspirin. For he had a splitting headache. From the veronal, of course. A headache evidently far worse than that in a certain SKUNK’S head as even now he realizes his case is lost.

  And then I knew I must somehow—someway—explain the thing that stood there in front of St. George. Before the storm of publicity broke. So I told him quickly that my phone bell had rung shortly before midnight. And that when I answered it, I found myself accidentally in on a telephone conversation between two men. Criminals. And I see your expensive lawyer now, KING OF SKUNKS, preaching that a sentence like that last one, with only one word in it, is evidence of insanity. But Barlow James will show the jury that such sentence is evidence of sanity, not insanity. And I told St. George that one of these criminals had told the other that Vann’s safe had been cracked just before 11 o’clock. And the skull of Wah Lee stolen. And that the skull was even then cached in an automatic checking-compartment on the Quincy Street L-Station. With the key to the box laid atop the compartment cabinet. And that the skull was to be passed next day to the Parson Gang. For $2000. And under those particular conditions which I myself, actually, had heard this “Actor” Rickbauer repeat on the phone. And, I then told St. George, I had hurried downtown quickly—and had myself gotten the skull. And was now waiting only for dawn, to call Lou Vann.

  Immediately, however, he heard my story, he said: “Under no circumstances do what you are going to do! For I can make a thousand dollars out of this affair—$500 for each of us. And still get the skull into your State’s Attorney’s hands. Though, unfortunately, it won’t do him any good. For this gang is frankly trying to use you for a decoy to save McGurk.” And when I looked surprised, he said: “I know far more about that famous Wah Lee Case than you dream!” And—

  “I’ll—I’ll say he did!” Elsa breathed. “Considering he was the one who wrote it all up once—from A to Izzard—for that magazine in there.” And hopelessly ensnared now in this strange—and tragic—and in parts only, frankly insane—story, she pressed on.

  And then he said: “You were deliberately rung into a spurious conversation earlier tonight—a conversation held entirely on one telephone in front of one telephone instrument—to try at least to make you attempt, through desire for money, to grab that $2000. And thereby save McGurk for all time to come. For that gang has already substituted another skull. But one that will fall down completely, with respect to dental conditions, as Wah Lee’s—when McGurk is later tried on it. After which McGurk, having legally been in jeopardy on the old crime, can never be tried on it again. And the way that gang intends to maneuver that doctored skull into the State’s Attorney’s hands is to tip the police off tomorrow, anonymously, or through some stool, that you—or somebody known to you—is there on Old P.O. corner with the stolen skull. And you—if, that is, you had fallen for their story!—would have gotten nothing except to be arrested—and disgraced. Whereas, from an article which I can squeeze out of their scheme, I can get one thousand dollars. From a certain magazine publisher who specializes only in true-fact ‘back-of-the-scene’ stories, and has money to burn. And who even goes to press with his next issue day after tomorrow. The article will be entitled ‘Arrested for Murder! Or What Goes On Back of the S.A.’s Doors!’ And in it I shall at last be able to reveal to the Public truthfully—and convincingly too, perhaps, since I am a man of reputation, of sorts, myself!—everything that happens to a crook from the second of his arrest, till the time he rises in the witness box and tries to save his neck from the noose. And to get it all quickly, I will bargain for immediate trial. And my surprising defense will be, of course, the real facts—

  “Well, of all the—of all the weird situations!” Elsa said, shaking her red head. “I—I can imagine nothing weirder than—than if, when my poor dear idiot of a client really was going to dish out the Truth with a capital T, he’d have had something fed to him in his coffee tonight, by Lou Vann’s connivance—or—or something—or some way—to make him lie like a billygoat! Which would have been the touch supreme to this fantastic situa—oh dear! Oh my! Oh—Saul!” And she pressed on, brain swinging dizzily.

  —the real facts; and, after they have subpoenaed you to confirm them, and you have done so, and I step down acquitted, I will do the entire article overnight. We’ll get the news-bureau photographs for pictures. Make the issue of that magazine just about to go to press. And have our money by tomorrow night.”

  I had to agree. Because he had me. And now I am rambling, am I not, KING OF SKUNKS? The point has come at last, has it not, where I am proving I am insane? As for you, you already senile fool, you had better leave the trial and go on home right now, for there will be no rambling, and for every comma that your brilliant snide attorney can find so much as displaced, I order my woman herewith to give you $10 from that insurance money. Yes, St. George had me, Captain Congreve. Far worse than even THE KING OF SKUNKS, leaning forward there in the front row, dripping the putrid sweat that continually oozes from him, dreams. For I discovered today, after I had already told St. George that story, that phone service was cut off from my entire block all night, because of an accident to the transmission conduit for that block—and that there are no longer any automatic checking-cabinets on the Quincy Street L-Station! In short, Captain Congreve, my whole story to St. George cannot stand up. And I have realized all day that there would be nothing I could do, therefore, but let him hang himself. Since anyway he thrust himself into this affair unasked, and—But we went through with his plan. He took up his position on that corner at noon. With the brightest colored box we could make. To attract the real gang (in case they really were on the level [as I absolutely knew] about passing that money) and get the $2000. Or to guide the police, whom St. George was certain had already been tipped off that somewhere in the Loop, around noontime, would be a man with a colored box containing that stolen skull.

  It was even I who precipitated the actual arrest. Though I could do nothing else. For I was standing, about a quarter block from St. George, on Dearborn Street, when I saw Archbishop Pell approaching with another man. I knew the Archbishop to be the most curious old prynose in all Chic—

  “Ow!” said Elsa. “The Church can be damned thankful that I’m squelching this damned docum—owoo!” she broke off, as she suddenly realized that if this paper were suppressed, then her client—Grimfaced, she resumed.

  —knew him to be the most curious old prynose in all Chicago. I hurried on ahead of him. Passed St. George. And said, as I passed: “Behind me comes a man in parson costume who’ll be certain to accost you. But he’s not a Parson Gangster; he’s genuine—as I happen to know.” And on I hurried.

  The rest of the facts are known to all. St. George led with his chin by admitting, to Pell, a crime he did not commit. And by letting himself be arrested. Under the damning circumstances he was arrested under. And who is now headed for trial. In which the only possible thing open to me—as at least I have known all day—would be to deny completely and utterly the apparently wild and fantastic tale he will tell on the witness stand; to swear, moreover, that he never was in my flat in his life except perhaps as a possible sneak-thief—and that my flat had been apparently visited thus three nights before: to declare that I had been talked to, at most, concerning a write-up, only on the telephone—that I had turned the petitioner down flat—and that, therefore, before being brought into court and seeing Doe-St. George there, I had never met him either personally or legitimately; and to then and there reveal in court that, according at least to the phone conversation St. George had held with me, he was with some invalided but notorious Cicero safecracker night before last, thus giving the Cicero detective who actually saw him there in person a chance to come forward and confirm my statement. And in this manner make it conclusive that St. George himself wa
s rung in by the underworld to do that job in the office of you, Lou Vann. And—But for the first time in this long letter, Commissioner Brittman, I am beginning to feel a bit exhausted. And if I am to retain such energies as I shall require for the final step, I must conclude the letter quickly.

  “Not—not too quickly, Saul!” Elsa breathed. “For you must lose your energies—and even your nerve—you must!—before you—you take such a step. You must! You must!”

  And she pressed on, her temples actually throbbing now.

  And now, Eustaqua, Brown Priestess of Strange Love, it is time that I address a few lines to you. All my final lines, in fact. And no more to those who would attach a penitentiary number to me. For, Eustaqua, all my precious plans are now, for me, completely out. And it is I who led with my chin. And not this St. George. For I learned late today—from a source which I will not attempt here to state, but which will in due course reveal itself—that the famous Criminal Identification Department of the Chicago Detective Bureau, ever working away upon the Klondike Building Crime, has traced, directly to me, the ownership of a pair of wooden spectacles which I inadvertently left behind me in Lou Vann’s office last ni—

  “Good gosh!” Elsa ejaculated. “And he owned ’em all the time! Thanks to all the easy coin she’s been ladling out to him! Or—or maybe at that, the illicit brewery job story—and the ability to draw ’way ahead on his pay—was the McCoy just as much as—as his involvement with this woman ape is. And so he owned the specs all the time!—except that they were No. 4 of the four pairs he told me he’d lost; and which means—” But no further did Elsa attempt to clamber out on this now fruitless branch of speculation.

  —which I inadvertently left behind me in Lou Vann’s once last night. And which were not brought to light—as now I completely reconstruct things—until the C. I. D. examined beneath the couch, and alongside the wall against which it stood. And—

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Elsa groaned, actually aloud. “A hell of a lot of good suppressing this letter is going to do now! And a hell of a time—for Saul to be ‘reconstructing’ things. For—” But on she went helplessly:

  —stood. And until I learned the disconcerting news of these spectacles coming to light in the hands of the C. I. D., I was of the absolute belief that I had lost them quite elsewhere than in Vann’s office. For figuring back from the point, subsequent to leaving Vann’s office—subsequent, even, to dismounting from that Jap-driven taxi—where I first discovered I no longer had them on my person. I—

  “Oh!” Elsa groaned again, “the poor damned haidfo’getter of the hopeless Tribe Moffit.” Her eyes ached so badly now that she had to sweep them momentarily from the paper. And with what she had already seen “reconstructed” in this very letter, she proceeded, during the forced respite from her aching eyes, to do the rest of the reconstructing herself.

  “As easy—as easy to read what actually happened—as for an Egyptologist—to read a First Grade primer. He lay down on that couch. And that side pocket of his coat—the same identical fool pocket he was carrying those Robert E. Lee specs in today—gaped open as he slept. And bang!—the specs slid out to the floor! Back of the couch. And then—then—that’s it—that’s it!—having hungrily fondled them in a taxi on the way over—for more likely than not, having that woman’s coin to spend on spectacles, he had it to spend on taxis, and came to Vann’s office in one to get there before it closed—he had the illusion, later—long later—that ’twas in the Jap-driven taxi that he went home in that he’d fondled them; and that he must, therefore, have left ’em there on the seat—where they must have been picked up probably by the next rider. But which at least made him feel secure that ’twasn’t in Vann’s office, anyway, that they got left—oh dear!—the mental incompetence fight—that’s going to grow out of this paper will go down into History!”

  And though her eyes ached now as though seven and seventy devils were pounding inside them with little hammers, she resolutely resumed reading.

  —first discovered I no longer had them on my person, I had the profound illusion that it was definitely outside of Vann’s office where they and I parted company. And that—but my reconstruction, Eustaqua, of what I thought happened is of no significance here in the face of what I have definitely learned. For the fact of the famous C.I.D.’s tracing those spectacles to me confirms that it was in Vann’s office where they came to light—whether under the couch or back of the couch. And to have even traced them to me, as the C.I.D. has, it has thereby learned a fact about me which is in direct contradiction to a statement I personally made today to Lou Vann on the phone. For to have tied ownership of the spectacles to me, the C.I.D. has had to wire Alfred Opp, conductor of Opp’s Oddities Bazaar, being held here, and who told me only himself late yesterday afternoon, when I bought the spectacles with the last currency I had, that he was flying to New York after dinner. And Opp not only has a ledger with the names and addresses of all purchasers from his bazaar, but he has been able moreover to tell the C.I.D. that I bought the spectacles at 4:15 p.m. An hour when I personally told Lou Vann I was outside of Chicago. And many hours’ journey outside, moreover.

  “Told him,” Elsa nodded, every detail of her conversation with Saul flooding inexorably back on her, “that he was in Springfield—trying to get his license restored! And told me, in turn, he was drunk. Whereas, in reality, he was—” She did not finish, but with a dolorous sigh from out of her very boot-tops, went on.

  And so the moment the C.I.D. brings their complete findings to Vann, I am lost. Particularly in the face of the story St. George will tell tonight on the witness stand. I am lost, Eustaqua. (Though only, of course, in this now unsatisfactory cycle.) For while it is easy enough, Eustaqua, merely to deny a story on the witness stand—or all aspects of the story!—it is another thing entirely—as only YOU know!—to stand up under a withering cross-examination about it, and to explain any non-explainable contradictions therein. [Viz. your own experience in London in 1910.] And the only final outcome, Eustaqua, will be that Vann—bitter because I entered that crime, and killed off all the chances, for all time to come, to convict the Higher-Up in the Parson Gang and the Wah Lee kidnapping—and thus cheated him out of what would have been the only real triumph in his whole “great” State’s Attorneyship—Vann will indict me as accessory-after-the-fact of burglary and grand larceny; will try me; will easily convict me. For it was no less than this Vann who said, in his famous office-taking speech: “And to anybody in my regime who—through greed or to secure personal ends—aborts the conviction of anybody else, I promise to see—if humanly possible—that he serves some or all of the sentences he’s aborted.” Yes, Eustaqua, to make good on words like that, Vann, who will be able to show that I have aborted long sentences for at least a quartette of persons, will see that I serve my share.

  And rather than serve not less than 10 terrible years in Moundsville Pen, under such conviction, and live in disgrace ever after—I prefer to go now. [To step forth, in short, from the now quite impossible cycle, into another cycle where I shall find myself again at the identical point where I am in this one, but without this particular pattern of actualizations confronting me.] But in stepping easily and lightly forth, to immediately rejoin you, Eustaqua, in one of the infinite parallel cycles, I leave this letter, duly and properly signed, by which, beyond any doubt, the “you” that lies in this cycle will obtain that insurance in spite of all the efforts of the KING OF SKUNKS to prove that I am insane. For my letter shows the unbroken quality of my mind—and the inescapable forces which necessitate my “ending myself” (as the courts will naïvely put it]. Or “resuming myself more fortuitously,” as James will demonstrate. But after my “sanity hearing,” Eustaqua, is successfully over—for you—I wish you to render to the KING OF SKUNKS—for me—one thing. A mere gesture, at most—but one which Chicago’s great State’s Attorney may take as a cause for prosecuting you—on a misdemeanor. Though if he does, you may poi
nt out to him gently—but in open court—with this letter—and this envelope—that it is too, too bad that he must prosecute small-time offenders like yourself when the name by which Rickbauer addressed the man on the wire with him, is the identical one which I have typed out on the inside flap of the envelope containing this letter. But be that as it may, Eustaqua, my last petition to you is as follows: after the jury says that I am sane, and that the insurance money is all yours, I wish you to give to THE KING OF SKUNKS—for one thing. And I know that you will. It is a mouthful of spit. Spit churned up in the very courtroom from chewing betelnut. And square in his leering, sneering, slavering face.

  Good-bye, Eustaqua—till, within a little while—and in another cycle—we rejoin.

  S. Moffit

  “Oh!” was all Elsa could say, as she reached the bottom of the virulently bitter—yet coolly worded—communication. “My God! Poor Saul’s whole life a miserable failure, as it was—and now this to—to cap it! It’s—it’s awful. For if the double-whiskey he may have taken to steel his nerve for that—that so blithe bit of ‘cycle stepping’ has been followed by another—and left him sodden—then he—he sure will be up the creek. For Vann will try him—and no foolin’. And if—my God!—if Saul has already put himself out of the way—that’s—that’s awfuller yet! Oh—my! And what—what will his father say? He’ll—he’ll see crimson—when he sees the terrible things Saul has called—oh dear! I’d—I’d better only tell him the essence of this thing. Or else he’ll—well, it’s up to me now, I guess. To dish out tough, tough news—either way it stands.”

  But only here did it dawn on Elsa that she had not yet read all this letter contained. Rather—letter and envelope. For there was the matter of the name—by which Saul had actually heard Rickbauer address his chieftain—on the wire.

  Hastily she jerked from her bosom the envelope which still protruded clumsily therefrom. And revolved, clear about, its loose flap. Gazed at the inner side—now fully uppermost. Saw, typed thereon in capitals, the words—